


Love like Cats

by Laroyena



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Alfred-centric, Alternate Universe - Cats, Assassination Attempt(s), Bat Family, Cat Butler, Cat Violence, Cuddling & Snuggling, Family Drama, Family Feels, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Humor, Kid Fic, No ships but yall know my feels, but they're cats, cute cuddly cats, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-12 08:27:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9064150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laroyena/pseuds/Laroyena
Summary: “This takes crazy cat people to a whole new level,” his old friend told him. “So this old family your dad took care of, they left their fortune to a cat.”
Alfred Pennyworth, ex-special agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service, moves to America to become a butler. A cat butler.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write fluffy cat AU because who doesn't want a fluffy cat AU. Even if this story ended up far more serious than its beginnings. 
> 
> Unabashedly inspired by mysonshineblr's [amazingly cute Bat Cat illustrations](http://mysonshineblr.tumblr.com), as well as [this fic where Damian names his cats after his family members](http://archiveofourown.org/works/379045). This was also a great way for me to really think about Alfred and his past... obviously he is the butler than holds the family together, but there've been plenty of hints of his past before butlering (a secret intelligence agent! an actor! all of the above!)
> 
> Though I am neither French nor English, so please let me know if I've messed things up. All brit-pick mistakes and google-translated french errors are on me OTL
> 
> The trope of having a kid come find an adult once they're no longer a baby seems a staple in fiction (Damian, Kon, Julia...) but it's more interesting for me if Alfred knew of Julia's existence before he left for the states and not after. Really explains why he throws himself into caring for the cats so much. THEY ARE HIS FAMILY.

1.

 

It took Alfred four days to finally catch a glimpse of the elusive Bruce Wayne. He turned to find huge glowing eyes boring holes into his back from under the staircase... and then they were gone.

“I’m _not_ joking,” he hissed at his unapologetically amused ex-partner over the phone. Cutting the bastard out of his life wasn't an option, unfortunately. Only half a year since he retired from the field and the stir-crazy was going to eat him alive. Fulfilling his father’s dying wishes and flying to the states had been a last ditch effort to save his sanity, and while dusting the many, _many_ rooms of Wayne Manor had indeed distracted him for a bit… it was lonely.

Especially when the goddamn cat was doing its best to melt into the shadows.

“This takes crazy cat people to a whole new level,” George finally stopped laughing. “So this old family your dad took care of, they left their fortune to a _cat_.”

“No kids,” Alfred said. “And their old family cat only had one kitten who, apparently, was the one that found the bodies.”

“Cat trauma.”

“Don't joke, it's _true._ Handling the legal matters is enough of a headache, George; I’d send you a copy of the will myself if I could. Not only does the fortune belong to the cat, but there are all these stipulations for the cat’s well-being before I can use the funds in any way. The goddamn lawyer comes in person to make sure I haven’t murdered it for the fortune, which wouldn’t work because again, _they left their fortune to a cat_.”

“So what _does_ happens if Mister Boots dies?”

“The fortune goes to several pet charities,” Alfred said. “Or to an heir that Mister Boots chooses. I mean Bruce. His name is Bruce.”

“They let their _cat_ choose an heir? How? Does he chuck tuna fish at them or something?”

“It's complicated. Crazy cat people, no need to go on,” Alfred said. “Though to be frank, the kitten _is_ incredibly intelligent. And my job right now is to care for the Wayne family. Which means the Wayne cat. If I can find it.”

“Godspeed to you, mate," his old friend said before hanging up the phone.

Godspeed indeed. Alfred was only one man, Bruce was a small kitten, and the manor was _huge._ He only knew the little beast was alive by the torn-up messes he left in various rooms; the empty food dishes left behind; and the occasional click-clack of little paws coming from somewhere above. But he didn’t really _meet_ Bruce until the brat got himself caught in a whole mess of electrical wiring. Proving that he was, indeed, a Very Smart Cat, he yowled until Alfred came running.

“You could have electrocuted yourself,” he scolded the kitten, who hissed at him. He was entirely black except for a white muzzle and belly, and possessed two startling blue eyes. The moment Alfred freed his last paw, the cat went skittering down the hall. “You're _welcome_ , Master Bruce. No manners at all, honestly.”

Saving him from imminent death by shocking, however, seemed to change something. Bruce began to grudgingly let Alfred see him during his daily routine. Which was a fancy way to say the kitten was stalking him. He’d turn around from dusting an old grandfather clock and find Bruce perched on an armchair boring holes into his back with his gaze. He’d open the kitchen cabinet for pasta and inexplicably find Bruce squatting inside, as if waiting for just the right moment to give Alfred a heart attack.

It was bizarre and it was creepy, but Alfred did feel better knowing there was another living being living in this ghostly mansion.

“You must miss your masters, don’t you,” he noted when he found Bruce lying in the old master bedroom for the fourth time in a row. Like every other time he tried removing the kitten from the blankets, the little thing hissed and clawed at him and buried under the covers. Rather than leave him to his sulking, however, Alfred sighed and sat down on the floor beside the bed. “I… understand. I lost my father not that long ago, you know. And my career. And my… well, I suppose my last connection to my homeland. I have as much of an idea of the future as you, I suspect.”

Bruce meowed from beneath the covers.

“It’s just the two of us,” Alfred said. It would’ve been absurd talking to a cat like it was a person, except he was sure that Bruce understood every word he said. “I say we should get along, don’t you?”

Bruce meowed again, but didn’t come out. Alfred leaned against the bed and fluttered his eyes shut, emotionally exhausted.

When he woke up, he found a fuzzy black kitten smushed against his face.

It was the first time Master Bruce let him pick him up into his arms, even if he gave the butler a few obligatory scratches and grumbles. Alfred ignored that and carried him to the kitchen.

Things were going to be fine.

\--

Picking up a naughty Master Bruce was all fine and good as a kitten, but was nearly impossible once he was full-grown. Master Bruce was large enough to take up an entire armchair all on his lonesome, though his favorite vantage point was still from deep within the shadows: unseen, unheard, and completely horror-movie-worthy.

Alfred had long gotten used to it.

“Get out from under there, you look ridiculous,” he’d prod the cat hiding under the ottoman with a foot, and Bruce would flatten his ears in indignation. “Or I’ll vacuum you right up. You’ll be the Bald Prince of Gotham then.”

“ _Mmf_ ,” Bruce grumped at him, but trotted out anyways with his head held high like he’d meant to leave all along. Brat.

The cat was silent and moody and particular in his habits, and yet Gotham loved cooing over him like their personal celebrity. Alfred put up with it with an aplomb borne from days-long stake-outs protecting spoiled princelings overseas. It was a necessary skill given Bruce’s favorite activity besides slaughtering poor birds and hoarding them behind a crawling ivy in the gardens: going on walks.

“Mrr,” Alfred felt a paw pushing demandingly at his heel. He turned and found Bruce staring up at him with an unimpressed expression, like he was saying _What are you waiting for Human, have you not read my mind?_

“It’s five ‘til, Master Bruce,” he told the cat. “As you well know.”

“Mrowr.”

“No, I won’t make an exception.”

“ _Mrowwwr_ ,” and oh, there were the claws. Alfred refused to budge and turned back to chopping onions for dinner, and eventually the cat huffed and stalked off to the front door in a sulk.

Every day at noon exactly, Alfred took Master Bruce on his daily walk. It was a bizarre habit. Bruce often came and went from the manor at his own leisure—making walks seem redundant—and even insisted Alfred drive him around Gotham so he could nose about every corner of this grime-covered city. Nothing but the best for the Wayne scion, of course.

“This is the fourth time you wanted to come to the amusement park,” Alfred said when Bruce finally put his paw on the dashboard—his cat-equivalent of telling Alfred to _Stop Here_. They’d been driving for fifteen minutes, and Alfred had tried skewing things in his favor by visiting _real_ parks. Every park. Bruce had stared at him with unwavering blue eyes the whole way before he finally gave up and veered off towards the boardwalk. “What’s up with you?”

Alfred didn’t like the amusement park. Not because he had anything against… amusement, but because the off-season and unused equipment attracted hoards of stray cats. If any of those vagabonds gave Master Bruce some awful disease…

Bruce ignored him and hopped out of the car. Alfred had no choice but to follow; there had already been four kidnapping attempts since he’d taken guardianship over Bruce, and while Alfred’s MI6 training had kicked in enough to retrieve the yowling cat every time, he didn’t want to tempt fate.

Fate was in its usual mood today. Gothamite citizens fawned over their resident cat billionaire, Alfred huffed, and Bruce trotted on. The ridiculous creature was sweet and cuddly with strangers, rubbing his face against wandering hands and purring when they lifted him into their arms, and Alfred always had the absurd urge to tell the young girls that _it was a Goddamn Lie_.

But no, that would be improper. Alfred made sure to walk him towards the wet and smelly docks in revenge, and Bruce retaliated by yakking all over his sensible brown boots.

With only the appearance of a suspicious-looking teenage staring at a group of girls during the span of their walk, Alfred considered this a successful excursion. Until Bruce stopped so abruptly on the way back he nearly tripped over him.

“Master Bruce, what…” and then suddenly Alfred heard it. The unmistakable sound of wild cats yowling, fighting, and before Alfred could haul Bruce into his arms the cat was off. Cursing under his breath, Alfred dug out his intelligence training once more to vault over unused park equipment and chase after him. “Master Bruce!”

Too late. He jumped over a groaning metal cart in time to see the wild cats scurrying back to their hideout beneath the bridge. In their wake lay the limp body of their victim. Mangled fur, blood fresh and red. Alfred grimaced. It was a horrible sight, and he wondered if Bruce wanted him to… deal with the body. He hoped not.

Proving his life goal to bring trouble onto his furry head, Mister Wayne himself just trotted up to the cat's corpse. Alfred jumped forward, ready to drag him back at once, which was when he heard a piteous mew. Bruce circled the body and then unceremoniously shoved it over with his nose. A tiny kitten, caked in blood and grime, emerged from under the shaggy coat of the dead cat. It mewed again, even more piteously than before. Bruce clamped his jaws around its scruff and carried the crying kitten back to Alfred, who put his hands on his hips.

“Master Bruce…” he started.

Bruce stared at him.

“We don’t know if it has some kind of… disease…”

Bruce continued to stare at him.

Alfred sighed and put out a hand. Instead of dropping the kitten into his palm, Bruce ignored him and trotted back towards the car. Alfred took a moment to glance at the corpse. Unlike the feral cats of the park, it was relatively clean and collared. Not feral, then. An escaped house cat? With a sigh, he wrapped the body in his scarf and resolved to bury it properly.

Bruce would yowl nonstop if he did otherwise.

\--

Under the grime, the kitten was a black and white tuxedo like Bruce but with prettier patterning. He was entirely black except for his little white boots, belly and a 'v' across his upper chest. The tip of his tail was also white, though any attempt to tickle it resulted in Bruce trying to bite his finger off.

“I see our little prince has taken quite a liking to him,” Leslie said, amused. Her assessment was relieving: no worms or diseases, as unlikely as that was, and small for its age. The veterinarian put the wriggling kitten down on the table, and Bruce—who was crouched as tensely as a wound-up spring—immediately snatched him up into his mouth and escaped under the couch. Leslie turned to Alfred. “Have you found the mother’s owner?”

“It was a local circus cat,” Alfred said. “I… asked them if they wanted the kitten, but apparently they had barely been able to find new owners for the mother's other kittens. And Bruce would probably claw my eyes out if I tried taking it away.”

“If he’s staying, he’ll need a name. You can’t keep calling him an ‘it.’”

Which was true, but Alfred had the absurd feeling that Bruce was the one who should name the kitten, not him. God, he'd really been holed up in that manor for too long. Master Bruce _was a cat_.

“Mrowr,” Bruce flattened his ears when Alfred crouched down and took a peek at them. Their newest family member lay curled between the adult cat’s forepaws. It let out a small mewl, and Bruce stopped his growling to lick its head and ears and back. The kitten snuggled closer, and honestly…

“You better not mess up the rug,” he told the bleary-eyed kitten, and Bruce looked unbelievably pleased with himself. “And Master Bruce, I'm sure you're aware that he’s your responsibility now. Caring for him must be your first prerogative.”

Bruce meowed at him and went back to grooming the kitten, and Alfred had no choice but to leave him to it.

\--

Richard followed Bruce everywhere, even after his fur puffed out the second week and collected dirt and dust like it was going out of style.

" _Mew_ ," the kitten called for Bruce as Alfred firmly dunked him into a bowl of warm water. He flailed and cried again and again, until Bruce stalked into the bathroom and glared at Alfred until he set the kitten on the ground. Even soggy and wet, Dick was able to wriggle away from the towel and scamper about the manor, mewing all the way—and it was more than funny watching Bruce chase after him in concern. With good reason too. The number of times he'd found Dick balancing precariously on the chandelier had given both of them near heart-attacks.

Unfortunately for mischievous little kittens, escape was impossible.

"All nice and dry," Alfred released the squirming kitten once he toweling him. Dick, free and dry and hair standing on end like a puffball, scurried over to Bruce and clambered onto his back: a black and white ball of fluff clinging to a sea of black. Alfred's breath caught.

"Take care of him," he said, reaching over and running his thumb over Dick's fuzzy head. The kitten meowed. He hadn't thought of  _that_ since he'd sealed it deep into his mind back home. Before setting foot on the plane; before he'd even visited his father's deathbed; before he'd even left France, his one last attempt to talk sense having been stopped by an unanswered door. 

Bruce gave him a _Really, Human, don't tell me what to do_ stare before turning and lumbering off... Dick clinging tightly to his back the whole way. Alfred allowed himself a small smile and a shake of his head.

Honestly, these cats. Richard's addition was the distraction he needed. A breath of fresh air. A tiny life that could help pass the time, until his wounds wouldn't hurt quite as much anymore.

\--

The doorbell rang. 

"Richard!" Alfred barked when a familiar puffball flew past his feet. Hanging up his apron and setting down the featherduster, Alfred strode briskly to where the aforementioned troublemaker was pawing insistently at the front door.

“Show some manners, Master Dick,” Alfred nudged the meowing cat over with a foot. He hauled open the doors and found a familiar face grinning at him from the other side. A small, involuntary smile graced his face. “George! You’re early.”

“My flight landed early,” his old MI6 friend boomed, clapping Alfred’s shoulder and stepping inside. He dropped his suitcase by the shoe rack and began removing his boots—and nearly bowled over when Dick wound around his legs and rubbed his face against his ankles. “Whoa there! Is this Mister Boots, Al? He’s… friendlier than you described him.”

“No, that’s Richard—Dick, for short,” Alfred scooped the tuxedo cat up into his arms. Dick _mrowred_ and made one last attempt to snuffle at George’s boots—so sweaty! so _new_!—before giving up and climbing onto Alfred’s shoulders. Used to such antics, Alfred refused to sneeze when Dick’s fluffy white-tipped tail tickled his nose. “Master Bruce is undoubtedly hiding underneath the staircase. Let me take your coat—we’ll have tea in the sun room and catch up.”

George was older and gruffer and a bit more battle-worn than he’d been the last time Alfred had seen him in the hospital, but it wasn’t as if Alfred hadn’t aged as well. He happily dug into tea and biscuits—“I had fast food at the airport—awful stuff, greasy as anything. Me Ma woulda keeled over from one bite of the McMuffin thing, let me tell you”—and raised a brow when Dick slid off of Alfred’s shoulders and onto the table. He sat beside the tea biscuits and stared unblinkingly at their guest, tail flopping back and forth.

“You don’t write back, you don’t pick up your phone,” George finally said after wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Here I come all the way overseas to find you with twice as many cats as you said. Don’t tell me the crazy cat obsession’s contagious, Al.”

“Master Bruce insisted."

“Master Bruce is a _cat_.”

“That cat,” Alfred said dryly, “can outmaneuver corporate executives in three meows, and I won’t have you saying otherwise. You’d know if you met him.”

“Definitely contagious,” George muttered, and Alfred dumped two extra sugar cubes in his tea as revenge. “Oi! You know I take it black.”

Alfred dumped one more sugar cube into the cup, and might have dumped in another one if Dick didn't suddenly pounce. A tea cup shattered. The bowl went flying. Sugar cubes flew in every direction.

Dick leapt down onto the floor and chased after each one, gleefully unrepentant of his mess, until Alfred stopped him with a stern: “Master _Richard!_ ”

Dick froze, a sugar cube half caught in his mouth.

“What have I said about knocking over the cutlery? And eating sugar? Spit that out this instant."

Dick sucked the rest of the cube into his mouth, meowed, and then shot out of the sunroom like a bolt of lightning. Richard was playful but whip-smart; he knew he was in trouble.

“So this is what you do all day?” George sat back in his chair as Alfred fumed at the mess on the ground. “Clean some old, dusty rooms; chase after some spoiled cats. You’re _Alfred Pennyworth_. Who saved my freckled ass when that German emissary caught on to my trick? Who wrestled the mark away from that Russian hooligan on that train heading up towards Scotland?”

“That was a long time ago,” Alfred said quietly.

“What’s a few years,” George waved a hand. “And I know you retired ‘cause of your ‘leg’—we all know it wasn’t your leg—”

“George.”

“—but it’s not like we can’t still use your noggin,” George continued. “I know this is… out of blue, but honest, Al. You’re skills are being wasted here. Come back to England.”

Alfred didn’t say anything for a long moment. Finally, he set down his teacup and sat back in his chair. “Is this why you suddenly called, asking for a place to stay in the states? Did the embassy send you?”

“Naw, Al, I wouldn’t do that,” George shook his head. “You can call up our old friends, they’ll confirm I’m actually on vacation. But there’re talks, you know. The brass is shaking things up. I’m sure there’ll be a spot for you if you want, but you gotta let me know as soon as possible.”

Alfred squeezed the handle of his cup. “The cats.”

“Someone else can take care of the cats.”

"Not these cats."

"Alfie..." A sigh, a shake of his head. Clearly he noticed how close Alfred's cup was approaching the breaking point. “Look, I get it. Too sudden, too life-changing. Too… painful. But you know I’m right. This isn’t you. Just gimme a call as soon as possible once you make up your mind.”

Alfred didn’t say anything. He simply stood up and carefully began retrieving the spilt sugar cubes—and George, bless his heart, allowed the conversation to move onto easier topics. Family and friends and the ridiculous difference between Britain and the States, and George had two kids now, did you know? And his missus had taken up tennis recently. Say, when was Al gonna go out and get a lady friend?

“You know my track record,” Alfred said in a warning tone, and George let the matter go.

Not even George would dare talk overtly about Marie or Julia. Not if he wanted to set foot in Wayne Manor again. That was a closed chapter of his life. Now… now, Alfred had Bruce and Dick. That would have to be enough.

\--

“You were terribly rude today, Master Dick,” Alfred said upon catching sight of round, blue eyes staring at him from across the hall. George was already sleeping in the guest room, and Alfred was in the middle of laundry. “Toppling the sugar bowl? Master Bruce had already hidden away, no need for such distracting shenanigans."

"Meow."

"If I find ants in the coming month, it'll be on you.”

" _Mrrreow."_

 _"Yes,_ you!"

Dick sniffed and flopped down in the middle of the hall. Rolling his eyes, Alfred set down the laundry basket and went to pick him up. The attempt was undermined by the tuxedo cat doing his best impression of a limp noodle. Honestly. The only reason he ever acted up like this… Alfred froze.

“Master Richard, where’s Bruce?” he asked, and knew he'd struck gold when Dick suddenly regained use of his limbs and began squirming in his grip. “Is he even home?”

“ _Mrrrr_ ,” Dick said. He used magical cat powers to melt into a pile of fluff and pop out of the other side of Alfred's grip. He bolted down the staircase and Alfred followed, because if Bruce had gone out brawling _again_ —

There was no sign of either cat downstairs. He stood as still as possible and peered at the bottom of each piece of furniture in every room until he saw it. The tiny twitch of a white-tipped tail under the piano cover.

“There you are, you rascal,” he said, ducking beneath the grand piano. But whatever satisfaction he had slipped away at the sight of Bruce laying on his side, the cat's breaths shallow. Three ugly gashes ran down his belly. Dick, who was curled up tightly against him, carefully licked at each wound and making a low _mrrr_ noise whenever Bruce twitched.

“Master _Bruce,”_ Alfred snapped, and Dick’s ears flattened at his tone. “Your life is not worth escaping my ire. How long have you been here?”

Bruce growled but didn’t meow, which just went to show how much pain he was in. Feeling uncharitable—because of _course_ Bruce would hide away rather than seek medical attention, of _course_ Dick would do his best to help him cover it up—Alfred crawled over to the cats and unceremoniously hauled Bruce up into his arms. The Wayne scion thrashed and hissed, Dick began emitting loud, angry cries like a wailing ambulance, and it was a blessing that George slept like the dead.

“Our guest is _sleeping_ ,” Alfred shushed the cat-alarm anyway. Dick, undeterred, kept up his upset yowling and attempts to claw his way up to Bruce. “And Master Bruce needs medical attention as soon as possible, something _you_ are hindering with this nonsense.”

Dick meowed even louder, but at least he stopped getting in the way of Alfred’s feet. He carefully set Bruce onto the operating table in the infirmary and went to wash his hands. By the time he returned, Dick had hopped up from a chair and pressed his entire body against the larger cat’s good side. Alfred blinked rapidly. God, it seemed like just yesterday it was Dick on the table and Bruce refusing to leave. Their little kitten was all grown up now. Grown up enough to smush his paw on Bruce’s face and lick his ears despite the older cat's growls.

And then Alfred poured sanitizing solution onto Bruce’s wounds and the cat _roared_.

It was a game of fur and claws then, because Bruce hated needles. And medicine. And anything else remotely medical, to the point that practically bleeding out on the table wasn’t enough to stop his usual bid for freedom. Alfred only managed to administer an anesthetic when Dick gracelessly flopped onto Bruce’s face and suffocated him with his furry belly.

It was going to be a long, sleepless night.

\--

“ _Big_ cat,” George commented when he saw Bruce sulking in his usual armchair, too sore and stitched up to slink into hiding at the presence of a stranger. Dick was curled up half beside him and half on top of him. The younger cat's ears perked up, alert and protective as he watched their guest tug on his boots.

“Master Bruce Wayne,” Alfred introduced shortly before herding the agent through the door. Bruce hated strangers on a good day, and with him injured… Still, he had manners. Before he let his friend go, he sighed and said: “George, look. If you really are on vacation, then tell me you have your living arrangements sorted.”

The redhead looked affronted. “Of course I do, Al. Told you this wasn't some mission. I’ll be bunking with Frank for a bit before heading up to Boston. Wish I could stay longer, though. Drag you kicking and screaming from under that rock myself.”

“I would never dally under a _rock._ ”

“My mistake—a dusty old _mansion_.” George clapped a firm hand on his shoulder. “Just don’t be a stranger, alright? You’re not alone. And you don’t have to be.”

“Goodbye, George,” Alfred said neutrally, and stood tight-lipped as George shook his head. He leaned against the doorway and watched his old friend slip into a cab and drive off—back to his life of adventure and mystery and fighting tooth and nail for his country. His hands itched at the simple thought.

Once he was out of sight, Alfred closed the door and went to go fetch some cat treats. Master Bruce was miserable enough to earn a few, even if Dick was probably going to steal most of them.

\--

Bruce was off his paws for a month, and then he was out recklessly endangering his life, the Wayne fortune, and Alfred’s peace of mind once more. How or why this had started escaped Alfred’s understanding. All he knew was that one day, his charge had suddenly decided it’d be an excellent idea to begin brawling on the streets like some hooligan. Any attempts to stop it just resulted in stunts like _hiding under a piano_ , so Alfred was helpless to the heir's whims.

Until he came home one night with Dick passed out in his jaws, and it was far past time to put his foot down. Whatever villain was constantly threatening his boys clearly needed to be taught a lesson—and, unlike the cats, Alfred had the entire world wide web at his disposal. And a GPS tracker.

“ _Shoo! Enough!_ ” Alfred stormed out of the car and ran towards the horrifyingly large crowd of feral cats snarling and biting his charges. The amusement park was dimly-lit and even more haunting at night; a dark turn to the day they’d found Dick here a little more than a year ago. He whipped out a spray bottle full of lemon juice. “I’ve got citrus and I’m not afraid to use it, you ugly buggers!”

“ _Mrr!_ ” Dick suddenly hopped onto Bruce’s back—just in time to bowl over a scrawny orange thing that had launched itself off of a whirl-a-round horse. Alfred sprayed down the ferals closest to him and kicked aside those that refused to duck away—and if someone had told him years ago he’d be putting his training to the test against wild cat packs, he would’ve laughed in their faces.

This, however, was no joke. By the time the wild cats had retreated back to their shadowy nests below the ride platforms, the three of them were covered in scratches and bites but very much alive. Alfred pled to the high heavens that Dick’s and Bruce’s vaccine shots both held. Scooping up each injured cat beneath an arm, he limped back to the car and placed them in the back seat.

Then, he drove them home.

“This—we can’t—” the Gotham ASPCA clerk gaped at the Wayne Foundation check Alfred handed over the next day. Too flabbergasted at the numbers to notice the multiple bandages on his hands, thank heavens. “This is quite a lot.”

“It should be enough to cover the fees for catching and neutering the feral cats coming into the city,” Alfred said stiffly. The bright morning light continued to exacerbate his headache. “Which I believe had been a problem for some time?”

“It’s true that the feral cat population at the amusement park has gotten out of control,” the woman said. “I mean—well. We’ve been doing our best rounding them up from the streets, but with limited funds…”

“Then I trust you can make good use of _these_ funds,” Alfred interrupted. “Hell, if needed, we can make an annual donation if that helps matters. Just get those feral cats _off_ the street.”

He came home to find Bruce and Dick lounging side-by-side on the couch in the sitting room, both of them staring at the front door like creepy cat statues. Carefully treating each scrape and bruise had been a miserable experience for everyone, and Alfred was just glad to see that Bruce hadn’t scratched away the wrappings on his legs.

“I dealt with the blasted pests,” Alfred told them. “Now I don’t know if you just don’t like them in your territory, or if it has something to do with your little one”—not that Dick was little anymore, but he’ll always be littler than Bruce—“but they shouldn’t be a problem anymore. No more brawling, Masters. I'm quite serious. You’ve dealt with Dick’s case and threatened my heart far too much in these last few months.”

“ _Mrr_ ,” Bruce huffed. He jumped down and stalked over to Alfred—and, in an incredibly rare move, affectionately nuzzled his leg. Dick perked up and rushed to join in, jubilant meows overriding Bruce’s soft purrs.

“You’re very welcome, Master Bruce, Master Dick,” Alfred said gently. He knelt down and drew them both into his arms. “Goodness knows what you two would do without me.”

And then, in a softer voice: “And I without you.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Bruce was far too smart for his own good._
> 
> _“It’s not that simple, you stupid cat,” Alfred snapped the fifth time Bruce crawled onto the tabletop and batted the phone to the ground._

2

 

It wasn’t that Alfred _disliked_ Jacques Remarque, though from their brief encounters he'd hardly been given reason to like him. No. He barely knew the man back in his intelligence days, much less known him enough for him to show up on his front step out of the blue.

“I don’t know where Marie is,” he told Jacques, hands clenched so tightly on the door latch his knuckles bled white. “And if I did, I’m not sure why you expect me to tell _you_.”

“Because if she is in trouble, I need to know. Do not be difficult, Alfred—the matters of the heart…”

“…are none of your business. And I don’t know where she is, what she’s doing or who she is still friends with. She made her position on my involvement quite clear. Now, I would have greatly appreciated it if you’d called before arriving, Jacques, because I’ve got quite a few chores to complete today.”

“Cats to take care of, non?” Jacques rolled his eyes and forced his way into the foyer. Alfred glowered at him. “Yes, I’ve heard from George how… quiet your life is nowadays. Which is why I thought Marie may have come to lay low with you after her last mission disaster.”

“Marie wouldn’t come here,” Alfred said, voice brusque. “She's made it her life mission to keep me a country away from Julia at all times."

This actually gave the Frenchman pause. "Julia? Marie’s a French agent on constant missions, do you think she simply carries about a toddler every time she’s off shooting spies? Non,” Jacques shook his head. “She leaves her with me whenever she’s off—I end up seeing Julia even more than Marie sometimes. Which is why I must find her. I thought…” A considering pause. “I thought you knew?”

Alfred’s tight-lipped silence was telling enough. Because he didn’t know. He didn’t know Marie would rather leave their daughter in the hands of a stranger over her own father; that it had been going on for years. How would he have known? That chapter of his life had been closed for years, even if George and Jacques and even Marie, in her own way, kept trying to tear those pages wide open once more.

“Does… does that mean you have her with you now?” the words slipped from his mouth before he could rein them in.

“Oui, in the car,” Jacques offered in his characteristically flippant way. Alfred wanted to punch him. “Looking for her Maman alongside her Uncle Jacques. Do you want to see her?”

More than life. More than anything. His hands shook, because now _he_ was the one standing before the closed chapter. His promise to remove himself from Marie’s life had been enough of a lock once, but now… it was like he’d been handed a key.

He squeezed his eyes shut: "I made a promise, Mister Remarque. I plan to keep it.”

Jacques snorted. “What is a promise to a child’s well-being? Empty words. Marie is a good woman, but she has her faults. The promise you made was not only unfair to you, but to Julia too,” He leveled him a cool look. “And you know it. So why have you not done anything about it?”

The Frenchman huffed and flounced back out the door, clearly dismissing himself from the situation. George was a friend who understood the strict moral code Alfred had been brought up by; Jacques had no such concerns handicapping his icy judgment. “Julia needs her father, do you not agree?”

It was like his throat was filled with sand.

“She has you,” Alfred forced out—and slammed the door shut before this man, this—this _replacement_ for him could see him lose composure. It tore his heart out, stoked the fires of his rage, gave the walls power to suddenly bear down on his curled-up form on the floor.

He wasn’t sure how long he spent slumped against the mahogany. Long enough for the sky to grow dim and for the cats to grow restless, Dick’s unhappy cries for food only hushed by a stoic Bruce. The two eventually curled up like warm balls of comfort against Alfred’s thighs.

Finally, he wiped his face and gently shook off the felines. Dick perked up at imminent dinner-time.

“I’ve got work to do,” he told the two seriously, and did his best to ignore Bruce’s stoic, unblinking gaze boring holes into his soul.

\--

 

“Did you know?” Alfred called George up afterwards, and his old friend’s silence was all the answer he needed. “You never mentioned.”

“You didn’t want to hear about Marie or Julia,” George said. “I wasn’t gonna bring it up. Why? Changing your mind?”

“George.”

“Really, Al, no one’s going to think you’re going back on your word when Marie’s gone back on hers. I mean, the way she put it, it sounded like she could care for Julia without you—“

“ _George_.”

“—which isn’t true, so why _shouldn’t_ you come back and take custody? For god’s sake, the girl’s young enough she probably wouldn’t remember not knowing you the first—”

“Enough, George!” Alfred’s tone was biting. “I can’t… I can’t think about that now.”

“It’s the perfect time to think about it,” George said. “That MI6 position's still open, Alfie. Just promise me you'll _think about it_."

“George."

"Promise me."

"I promise," Alfred whispered, each word burning like a secret. Because, for the first time in a long time... he doubted.

And doubt was a strange, slippery slope of a thing.

\--

Bruce was far too smart for his own good.

“It’s not that simple, you stupid cat,” Alfred snapped the fifth time Bruce crawled onto the tabletop and batted the phone to the ground. After the second time, he'd given up purchasing ceramic and went plastic, because his master was a tenacious bugger who couldn't possible understand his dilemma, and he was sick of buying phones. Bruce flattened his ears and hissed at the insult, and then darted off into the shadows.

An hour later, Alfred found the entire toilet paper roll in the closest bathroom torn to shreds and covering every inch of the gleaming marble—with the culprit in question simply sitting on top of the closed toilet seat and licking his paws.

“Master _Bruce_ ,” Alfred scolded. Dick wandered over and perked up at the sight of  _fluffy_ _fun_ toilet paper, and it took twice as long to alternatively clean the mess up and stop the smaller cat from sneaking in and wreaking absolute havoc.

He hadn't realized how... mellow Bruce had been until he suddenly directed all that energy spent fighting ferals to driving Alfred insane.

“Oh lord," he sighed. There were dead rats on his pillow. _Dead rats._

“ _Mrowr_ ,” Dick grumped in disgust from the doorway. He did an about-face and stalked out of sight, tail flicking upwards in distaste, because if there was anything Dick disliked more than baths, tight hugs and the vacuum—it was rats. Which was unfortunate for Bruce, since Bruce's favorite new hobby was hunting down the damn things. 

Other cats fought over shared litter boxes or stolen food trays. Alfred’s cats fought over Dick’s unwillingness to be dragged into dirty rat nests when he could be, you know, helping little humans and being petted.

“First of all, you know you can’t force Dick to hunt with you if he doesn’t want to,” Alfred addressed the Bruce when he found him sulking in the living room. Their last spat had ended with Dick biting Bruce’s ear before Alfred separated them. He’d put Bruce in the front seat and Dick in the back, and wasn’t surprised when both cats immediately hid in opposite corners of the manor once they arrived home. “And second of all, I _know_ you know leaving rats on beds is an awful thing to do. Which means you’re doing it on purpose.”

Bruce glowered at him.

“Just apologize,” Alfred said, and the cat actually _harrumphed_ and turned his head away. Perhaps it was hypocritical of him to insist given his own stubbornness, but honestly, Dick worshiped the ground Bruce walked upon. “And stop leaving dead rats in my bed. I _know_ you want me to call George, but I’ve made my decision. Now _go_.”

Bruce lay his head on his paws and closed his eyes, and Alfred pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose.

\--

In the end, he was the one who received a phone call instead.

“So there’s a quiet intelligence mission,” George started, like it wasn't a revolutionary move for Alfred to actually pick up the phone. Alfred opened his mouth and saw Bruce lurking in the corner of his vision, half hidden in the dark shadow of the hallway. After a long enough silence: “….Alfie?”

“Go on, George,” Alfred said, turning his back to the ridiculous cat shadow. The next time he glanced back, the cat was gone.

\--

He wouldn't realize how peaceful his life had truly become until it shattered. Two weeks. Two weeks was a long enough time for anything to happen.

\--

“Hello?” Alfred opened the front door. His time abroad had been unexpectedly rough—mostly because George had _lied_ , that certainly was not an intelligence mission—and he was looking forward to coming home to his cats. Except there was a distinct lack of fluffy, tuxedo cat pawing at his legs, and his heartbeat sped up. He called out, louder: “Opal, are you home?”

“Mr. Pennyworth!” the cat-sitter emerged from upstairs, looking frazzled. “You’re… home.”

“Exactly when I said I would be. Where are the cats?”

The girl looked uncomfortable. “Well… Master Bruce is in the master bedroom.”

His heart calmed upon catching sight of Bruce’s unmistakable form perched on the windowsill; a calm that quickly went, however, when Bruce refused to turn around and face him.

“He’s been a bit down lately,” Opal offered.

“Hm,” Alfred said. He dropped his luggage and turned to the girl. “And Master Dick?”

Bruce hissed suddenly, fur standing up like a particularly ruffled cushion. He leapt off the sill and burrowed under the bed covers. Opal dragged Alfred out of the room, ignoring his protests.

“I don’t know,” Opal blurted out once they were deeper into the hallway. She wrung her hands. “I mean. Well. He and Bruce got into a fight at the park, and then he ran off, and—and then there was a huge storm and I couldn’t find him." It was like the rest of the world faded away. He barely heard her continued rambling: "I’ve put out ads in the paper, I’ve gone back to the park to search, but—”

Alfred stopped her with a short: “When was this.”

“Two days ago,” Opal said, like that wasn’t far, far too long for one of _his_ cats to be wandering about alone. Alfred turned and strode towards the garages, because Master Dick wasn’t here. This wasn’t like Bruce going off on a sulky, angry rampage. Dick was smart and tenacious and quick, but he was _spoiled_. He’d been raised under Bruce’s watchful eye since he was a mewling kitten, and if he was on the streets…

“Bruce, I’m going looking for Dick,” he stopped by the master bedroom. The lump under the covers didn’t move. “Bruce?”

A hiss and the unmistakable outline of a twitching tail, and Alfred shut the door with a click. He was on his own.

He drove around every corner of Gotham he’d taken the cats to; to the amusement park where they’d found Dick to begin with, and whose feral cat population had finally gotten down to manageable levels; to the major estates neighboring Wayne Manor, because Dick was a _cat_. He couldn’t have gotten very far.

He even went back to the park Opal the Awful Sitter had undoubtedly lost his charge, and felt his heart sink at how the rain had turned the entire terrain into a muddy swamp. Those puddles were certainly deep enough to drown a cat.

No, he couldn’t think that way. He wouldn’t. Even if he called the ASPCA—who remembered the Wayne Foundation’s generous donation and were more than happy to come unlock the door after hours—and readied himself to look over the corpses dredged up from the storm.

It was horrible and depressing and too similar to the way Dick's mother had looked before he'd buried her. But there was no hint of a familiar tuxedo cat anywhere, and Alfred closed his eyes in relief.

“He’s out there,” he whispered to himself, if only to keep hope alive. "He _is._ "

He came home hours later, worried and defeated. Opal had left with only a note in her wake, clearly deciding save herself a tongue-lashing. She offered to replace the cat with another, like Dick was some torn-up shirt she could replace on a whim, and Alfred had rarely felt such anger since stepping foot in the states years ago.

Bruce himself hadn’t moved from under the covers of the master bed. Alfred wanted to shake him down for pushing Dick enough for him to run. For not accepting the fact that Dick clearly had his own interests and desires and couldn’t keep following after Bruce for the rest of his adult life.

Except Bruce was clearly miserable, and it wasn’t as if Alfred actually understood cat. Anger wouldn’t do anyone good right now.

“We’ll find him,” he pulled back the covers instead and put a hand on Bruce’s side. The cat refused to look at him. “I promise.”

\--

“Where’s Richard?” the newest Wayne Lawyer asked when he came over for Bruce’s monthly wellness check. He was far younger than the last lawyer and more chipper about the keeping-the-cat-heir-alive thing—both of which Alfred would have normally appreciated under different circumstances. He finished looking over Bruce’s dirty paws and stood up with a frown. “He’s usually the only one happy to see me.”

“Master Dick has… gone missing,” Alfred said stiffly, unwilling to go into detail. It was hard enough to say the word out loud: _missing_. Even more so when he realized it’s been a _month_. “Would you like some tea?”

It had been an awful month. No sleep, no rest. Certainly no time to answer Lucius Fox's phone calls as he went out chasing yet another lead that wouldn't pan out. Alfred went out searching every day, and then every other day, and with each passing week the chance that he’d find Dick’s body in some vet’s morgue grew more and more likely.

Two days after Alfred's return, Bruce emerged from his room with the sole purpose of eradicating all rats from the face of the Earth. Alfred wouldn’t catch sight of him for days on end; he would’ve thought he’d gone missing too if he didn’t occasionally find the food bowl empty.

Some nights, Alfred found Bruce sitting by the back door. Waiting.

One day, he wasn’t alone.

“And who are you?” Alfred frowned at the ratty thing hunched beside Bruce. It wasn’t quite a kitten, and it wasn't quite an adult cat. Bruce seemed to mostly ignore it while he stared unblinkingly at the sky. When he stood up and went on his usual rat-hunting route, however, the new cat followed.

It took a rare day-time spotting for Alfred to finally place this cat. It was the orange tabby from the feral pack at the amusement park, recognizable by the two scars slashed above its big green eyes. And if Alfred wondered why Bruce was dallying with an alley cat—cats that he hated, given the extent he went to fight them off—his questions were nixed the first time he saw the orange tabby catch a rat.

Orange was young but vicious, and he disposed of an entire nest with practiced ease. He even led Bruce down harder-to-spot paths too, as if the big black cat needed any more reasons to stay away from home.

“I know you’re trying to forget by keeping yourself busy, but you can’t run yourself to the bone like this,” Alfred told Bruce the next time he caught him at the back door. “You have to eat. Sleep. Work through whatever this is instead of putting it off.”

“ _Mow_ ,” Bruce spat back, clearly all too aware of Alfred's three o' clock dates with the tellie and tea. Three o' clock AM.

"That's different," Alfred tried, to no avail. Bruce vanished back into the night, and Alfred set a tea kettle on the stove with a defeated clang.

A week and a half more of Orange’s presence, and Alfred finally decided to give the thing a bath. If he was going to skulk about Wayne Manor, he was going to do it without tracking dirt onto the carpet. Orange clawed and hissed and growled, of course, but by the end he was clean enough for Alfred to let him go.

When Alfred tried nudging him back out the door, however, Bruce surprised him by plopping himself in the way.

“He’s wild,” Alfred said, heart caught in his throat. It was too similar to a certain incident not that long ago when Bruce had picked up a dirty kitten and dropped him without preamble into their lives.

Bruce didn’t meow. He didn’t even blink. He just settled even more firmly in front of the door and gave Alfred an almost pleading look. He needed the distraction, and he needed the company.

And Alfred, soft soul he was, couldn’t say no.

\--

“I hate New York,” Alfred muttered under his breath and pulled up his collar.

The air had turned brisk with the coming winter, and he couldn’t help but imagine how hard it would be for a cat to find warmth in the snowy outdoors. He shook his head: he couldn’t think of that. The whole point of agreeing to George’s impromptu adventure was to get his mind away from events he couldn’t control… even if they were, in some ways, George’s fault.

He continued, “It is… it is loud and noisy and no one has any manners. Bloody car drivers just about run over every bystander. Reckless asses.”

“Stop pouting,” George told him. Having a few inches on Alfred, he peered above the crowd in search for the theater. “I got these tickets to make up for last time. It'll be a blast."

A blast to the past, perhaps. Like the time he and George and two other members had gotten themselves stuck in the snow surveying their target for two hours. Or the other time George had to get a toe amputated after nearly drowning in an icy lake. Or the time they got lost in the theater district of New York. Oh wait. 

“My bollocks are going to _freeze_ ,” Alfred said. “George, what the bloody hell are we even doing?”

“Look, I got these tickets off me mate back from Sector Six; he told me we couldn’t miss it. Think we’re just being stupid. Come on, how about we turn left…”

“Oh yes, let’s go in a random direction. Surely we will magically solve this conundrum,” Alfred snarked. George rolled his eyes and tugged Alfred along, and he was so determined to stomp about in displeasure he almost didn't catch sight of it. Hanging across a tiny little theater was a blaring advertisement for a performing troupe.

“Alfred?” George called out when Alfred shouldered his way past the other pedestrians to take a closer look. It couldn’t be… except it was. There, in the far corner of the advertisement, was a cat. A tuxedo cat with white boots, a white tipped tail, and a distinctive v-shaped mark across its chest.

The sound of his blood rushing filled his ears. One moment he was shivering outside, and the next he was pushing past angry ticket collectors and stumbling inside the theater. The show had clearly just ended, and the audience were standing and clapping and making enough of a ruckus he couldn’t see the stage.

“Alfred!” he heard George’s voice call after him, to no avail. Alfred readied himself and pushed through the crowd. It was pandemonium. Elbows knocked him askew. Smells assaulted him from every direction. And then there was just noise: cheering and clapping and Alfred couldn’t tell what was up or down.

“Dick!” he tried yelling, but it was as if he’d gone mute. “Dick!”

"One last round of applause for our special act tonight," a booming voice called out from above and met with the swelling cheers of the crowd: "The Flying Graysons!"

Several trapeze artists bowed before the stage. Alfred pushed ever closer. He just needed to see. To catch a glimpse. He'd almost cleared the last line when one acrobat said, "and a particularly special applause for our little Nightwing! Give him some love, everybody!"

And then she lifted up a very familiar, very fluffy cat—and Alfred's voice caught in his throat.

He couldn't speak, but he didn't need to. The high vantage point clearly gave Dick a good look at the audience, because one moment he was beaming at the crowd and the next he was raising high hell trying to escape the surprised acrobat's grip. Several members of the crowd screamed when he successfully launched himself at them—and right into Alfred's arms.

“ _Dick,_ ” he gasped, hugging the squirming cat tightly against him. He couldn’t dream up the ridiculous softness of his fur, the brush of his affectionate head against his chin. The way his entire body vibrated in excitement. He was soft and clean and only a little skinnier than he was the last time he saw him, and Alfred found himself crying. He was dripping mortifying tears all over Dick’s black fur, and the cat stopped his ecstatic wriggling to lick his cheeks. “Master Dick, you’re _alive_. Do you know how worried we all were, you troublemaker? And what in the heavens happened to your collar?”

“ _Mrrr,”_ Dick pawed at his face, and their reunion could have gone on forever if the rest of the world didn’t choose that moment to assert itself.

“Wait, you’re Nightwing’s owner?” the acrobat from the stage said, clearly reading the pure joy radiating off the troupe’s wayward cat. And then she and the other acrobats were jumping off the stage and carefully herding away the audience too interested in their drama, and somehow Alfred found himself in a dressing room. Sitting on a pile of costumes and fluffy boa constrictors. The peace lasted for exactly two seconds until the lead acrobat put a hand on his shoulder and hollered: “Guys! It’s _Nightwing’s owner_! He's here!”

And it was like the entire troupe descended upon the two of them with congratulations and hollers. By the end of it Alfred had Dick draped over his shoulders and the performers were giving the cat teary goodbyes.

“This little darling brought me back my Isabella,” a motherly performer said, kissing Dick’s head. He meowed. “We were packing up after our show in Gotham when the storm hit, and my little girl went missing. We searched for hours until we heard meowing. And then there he was, covered in dirt and looking like he’d lost a fight with a tree—but when we followed him, he brought us to where Isabella was stuck beneath a fallen pole.”

“That sounds like our Dick,” Alfred said. “Thank… thank you for taking care of him.”

“We were always planning to head back to Gotham after our New York tour ended,” the performer told him. “We couldn’t just leave him in the cold, you see—the poor thing was so hungry-looking and wet in the rain, and such a sweet. Even wanted to join in on our performances. We'll be sad to lose such an energetic acrobat, but I’m glad you found your way home, my Nightwing.”

It was surreal. It was impossible. He clutched Dick to his chest and sat trembling on the front steps of the theater for fifteen minutes, still reeling from everything that happened. It was time enough for George to finally find him.

"Lost you in the bloody crowd, ended up going to see the show myself but the doors were closed!"

"There weren't tickets," Alfred said.

"What?"

"You told me the show was a surprise but wouldn't let me see the tickets. There weren't _tickets_ , George." And he turned and gave his friend a full view of Dick curled up in Alfred's arms. "Why didn't you just tell me?"

"Well, I dunno _what_ you're going on about," George blustered, "But if I did, then perhaps I know you'd be a nervous wreck the whole time. Not good for anyone, that."

Alfred sniffed and hugged the dozing cat closer to his chest. George put a hand on his shoulder.

"Thank you," Alfred whispered, and his ex-partner gave him a good-hearted shoulder slap.

"Glad you agreed to come to New York now, huh?" George laughed, and Alfred snorted so quickly the cold air sent him into a cough.

\--

Dick fled up the stairs the moment Alfred opened the passenger door: no stopping to investigate new smells, to rub against the furniture, to roll about in Alfred's lap one more time. No. There was only one thing on his mind, and Alfred didn't need to follow the excited meowing to know where he'd gone.

He found Dick padding around the Bruce-bundle stirring under the covers of the master bed, alternatively kneading and meowing and rubbing the length of his body against the lump of Wayne majesty. Finally, the smaller cat pounced—knocking the covers off and flipping himself inelegantly off the other side of the bed. Bruce scrambled onto his feet and jumped after him. Alfred couldn’t help but smile when Dick took it as a game of chase and scurried out of reach. They whirled in circles and circles until Bruce caught him by the scruff, never mind that Dick was too old to be carried around like that anymore.

“ _Mew_ ,” Dick pled to Alfred, who just folded his arms and leaned against the door frame.

“You very well know you asked for it, Master Dick,” he drawled, and Bruce forcibly hauled the smaller cat back towards the bed and onto the bed sheets. It took a bit of prodding and nipping, but eventually Bruce settled them both on a pillow. Dick purred as the older cat groomed the fluffed-up fur of his neck—something he hadn’t done since Dick was a mewling kitten kneading Bruce’s stomach for attention. It was unrivaled affection, and it brought a fresh wave of tears to his eyes.

“I can't believe we... we found you,” Alfred cleared his throat and whispered. He settled down beside the two cats, bed creaking under his weight. He felt worn to the bone. “We’ve missed you, haven’t we, Bruce?”

“Mrr,” Bruce said, and tucked his face into Dick’s neck.

Alfred hadn’t realized he’d drifted asleep until warm rays of sunlight crept through the window and tickled him awake. He snuffled gracelessly and entertained the idea of sleeping in… until an annoyed meow called to him from the open doorway.

“Yes, yes, I’ll have breakfast ready for you, Master Jason,” he yawned, rubbing his eyes and sitting up. The orange tabby trotted over and meowed again. While Jason usually kept to himself, he was never one to forgo a meal if he could help it. And Alfred may be a Suspicious Human, but he was also the Food Giver and that trumped all.

Except perhaps Bruce.

The tabby cat stopped at the foot of the bed, green eyes big and wide at the sight of an unfamiliar cat cuddling up against _his_ Bruce. He turned and glared at Alfred like this was his fault. Alfred was in too good a mood to let the grumpy teenage cat bother him, however, and simply beckoned him over.

“You’re not going to say hi?” Alfred said, watching Jason watch Dick sleep. His puffy orange tail stood straight up into the air. “Dick’s quite friendly.”

“ _Mrowr_ ,” Jason said—and Dick, most likely reacting to the sound of his name—yawned and cracked his eyes open. Those pretty blues immediately caught sight of the feral-turned-domestic cat Alfred was conversing with, and Dick.

Dick, their sweet and energetic and playful kitten-grown-cat; their friendly face to Bruce’s cold shyness and affectionate creature; _that_ Dick flattened his ears tight against his head and _snarled_.

“Master _Dick_ ,” Alfred said, shocked, and failed to stop Dick from scrambling out of Bruce’s grip and launching himself at the orange cat with his claws extended. Because Alfred couldn't have peace and quiet, clearly. Not even for a second.

\--

 _Message from Marie, Respond Y/N?_ George emailed him two days later. Alfred finished brushing Jason’s thick orange fur and firmly closed the laptop without answering. Some part of him will always ache for the life he could have had, but he was content with his family here. Even if Dick and Jason continued to fight like it was going out of style; even if Bruce spent his time either hiding or being as difficult as possible. Looking backwards only impeded his ability to look forwards, and after nearly losing Dick... well. He wanted to look forward as much as possible. It was time to move on.

\--

And then the phone rang. He picked up expecting George's rumbling voice scolding him from the other side—not the sultry tone of a woman he hadn't talked to for nearly a decade.

"Alfred," Mademoiselle Marie said in a too-calm voice. "I need a favor."

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You can’t expect things to go back to the way they were after this,” Alfred said, voice even. “Not if you’re letting me see her.”_

3.

 

“I _can’t_ ,” he hissed, “The two younger charges are taking up all of my time, and I am legally obligated to care for them—”

“You’re more concerned about caring about those cats than your own daughter?”

“That’s not what I meant, Marie,” Alfred forced himself to calm his voice. “You were the one who wouldn’t—you didn’t want Julia to have anything to do with me. Made it quite clear, in fact. Shouted it in a public restaurant and everything.”

“That was years ago, Al, and I know it wasn’t… fair of me to do that,” and Marie actually sounded contrite. “But I _had_ just found out you were a spy—a British Intelligence Agent—”

“I would’ve never…”

“—who sold _my secrets_ to the government and felt nothing for it.”

“Marie,” Alfred said. “Stop circling around the topic. What’s going on.”

A heavy silence, and finally her voice came over the phone: “I need to go undercover for two weeks, and I can’t leave Julia alone.”

“What about Jacques?”

“Jacques is dead,” and only Marie could drop a bombshell like that without missing a beat. “Which is why sending her overseas is now the safest option for Julia.”

Alfred closed his eyes.

“Don’t you judge me for it,” Marie’s tone went sharp. “Not when…”

“I’m not. I understand, and I’m sorry about Jacques. But it isn’t fair, Marie.”

Silence.

“You can’t expect things to go back to the way they were after this,” Alfred said, voice even. “Not if you’re letting me see her.”

“We’ll talk,” Marie’s tone was curt and vague, and Alfred knew if he pushed she’d simply hang up the phone and possibly try and protect Julia herself. And then he’d lose his little girl altogether, and Alfred couldn’t let that happen.

Even if it physically hurt for him to put down the feather-duster he'd nearly snapped in half with his iron-tight grip and say: “Just—let me know when her flight comes in, and I’ll pick her up.”

"Thank you," Marie said, and then hung up without further ado. Alfred braced himself on the cabinet and breathed.

\--

Julia was six-years-old and wearing a pink Hello Kitty backpack. She looked absurdly small next to her Uncle George as the two stepped out of the terminal. Alfred’s heart caught in his throat. She was beautiful: dark skinned and dark haired like her mother, with a serious little face only a Pennyworth could make.

“Alfred,” George greeted him with a big smile, in direct contrast to Julia’s dour silence. “And Dick.”

“ _Mrowr_ ,” Dick said from Alfred’s arms. While he'd been returned in nearly the same condition he'd been in before he'd gone missing, Dick's adventures away from home didn't leave him unmarred. Alfred had once come home exhausted from back-to-back Wayne Enterprises meetings just to find _Bruce_ meowing at the front door. Dick lay in a depressed little puddle on the floor of the sunroom, clearly distraught over Alfred's long absence—and so Alfred had no choice but to bring him along if he didn’t want Bruce glaring at him from the corner of the room.

“Marie wasn’t happy having me pick up the li’l missus,” George broke the silence as they headed towards the parking lot. Julia still hadn’t spoken, and Alfred found himself at a loss of what to say. “As if we’re France’s enemy at the moment. No. ‘Sides, this isn’t business. It’s personal. Oy, you want me to help you with your luggage, Julie?”

“Non merci,” she said. She glanced over at Dick, who’d spent the entire fifteen-minute walk back to the car trying to wriggle out of Alfred’s grip in an effort to smother his daughter with his entire fluffy being. Upon noticing her attention, he renewed his struggles.

“Master Dick,” Alfred scolded, and Dick just meowed at him.

“Minou,” Julia reached out—and Alfred made the very risky, unadvised decision to let go. Dick immediately pounced into her arms, sniffing and wriggling and clearly relishing in his newfound freedom.

Julie broke out into an actual smile at the furry thing’s honest affection, and Alfred’s heart squeezed.

“She found Jacques’s body,” George said under his breath once Alfred started the car. Alfred froze. “Marie thinks she saw the assassin’s face, too, but Jacques made sure to hide her away in time for Police Nationale to come save the day. She hasn’t really said much, and Marie’s been tight-lipped about the whole thing.”

“Do we know who’s after her?” Alfred said quietly.

George shook his head. “Not specifically, but rumor has it it's the Shadows. I can look into it if you’d like. MI6 still works closely with the French, and if I ask around…”

“No,” Alfred said. He pretended not to notice Julie tickling Dick’s stomach, absorbed enough in playing with the kitty to pay attention to their conversation. “I made that mistake with Marie once, and I won’t do it again. Besides, that’s not who I am anymore. I’m a butler.”

“Cat-sitter.”

“ _Butler_ ,” Alfred insisted, and pressed his foot down hard on the pedal.

\--

Bruce actually came out of hiding to inspect the tiny human with the pink bag, and Jason pressed his face against the glass door keeping him trapped in the kitchen.

“Are all these cats yours?” Julia addressed Alfred in perfect English. It was the first time she’d broken her silence since their meeting at the airport.

Alfred raised a brow. “Technically, I’m theirs. This is Master Bruce Wayne—my charge. I am his butler.” Bruce sat back on his haunches and flicked his tail. George snorted. Thankfully, six-years-old were far more accepting of the absurd reality of his life and so Julia stuck out her hand with a serious look.

“A pleasure to meet you, Monsieur Wayne,” she said, and Bruce put his paw in her hand and “shook” it.

“Alright little miss, how about we get you washed up and ready for bed,” George nudged Julia’s shoulder and gave Alfred a quick look.

“Je veux caresser le minou,” Julia said.

“English,” George said.

“I want to pet the kitty,” Julia revised.

“After you get yourself washed up. Right, Alfred?”

Alfred startled, unprepared for George to include him in the conversation. “Yes… yes, of course. Come this way, Julia. I’ve prepared a guest room for you across from my own quarters. You can properly meet the cats after your bath.”

Julia hunched her shoulders and reluctantly followed, and if their silence at the airport was awkward than this was unbearable. It was like a door slammed shut every time he tried starting a conversation, and Alfred wasn't a particularly skilled conversationalist to begin with. She closed the door in Alfred’s face once she made it to the bathroom, and Alfred could only assume she needed no help washing up.

That, or she needed time alone.

“Tell me she’s safe here,” Alfred asked George when he returned to the sitting room.

“Safer than she was over there,” his old friend commented. He opened up his own luggage case and removed familiar-looking communication equipment from under a stack of cardigans. “It’ll be harder for them to move about the states, and I’ll be staying for a week just in case. But she doesn’t need you hunting down the bastards. That’s my and Marie’s job. She just needs you to look after her.”

“I’ll do my best,” Alfred said, looking down. “But I’m not… I’m not Jacques.”

“Alfie, you managed to lure out a traumatized kitten and rehabilitated two more. Those cats are ridiculous forces of nature. All that little girl just needs time and love, and I know you have those in spades. You always have. Kept yourself away because Marie gave you no choice, but now… now things are different.” George nodded to himself, expression firm. "You must be different. For her."

\--

Julia came down from her guest room a half hour later, her dark hair wet, her face washed, and the rest of herself dressed in a pair of pink pajamas undoubtedly taken from her backpack. 

“Would you like some tea?” Alfred said.

Julia shook her head.

“We’ve also hot water and milk, if that’s what you prefer.”

Another head shake, and Alfred internally floundered. Thankfully, Julia’s earlier curiosity took over.

“Why is that one behind a door?” the little girl pointed at Jason. The orange tabby was slumped against the glass and snoring loud enough for everyone on the other side to hear. “Was he bad?”

“Jason? No, he wasn’t bad. He and Master Dick just don’t get along,” Alfred nudged Dick away before he could catch sight of Jason and go from cuddly fluffball to angry, hissing monster. They’d actually been improving the last few days, choosing to ignore each other rather than fight—until Jason left a dead rat on Dick’s pillow and Dick threw a shit fit. Ironic, since Alfred was eighty percent sure it’d actually been a peace offering. “Sometimes separation is the best way to get them to see the situation more clearly.”

“They shouldn’t be apart,” Julia said with a gravitas that hinted of a deeper meaning to her words. “That’s mean.”

“Ya can’t force two kittens to make up if they’re at each other’s throats, mon cher,” George called out, not even looking up from his transmissions. Alfred closed his eyes for a moment, irrationally grateful for his friend's motor mouth. “Now do you want to pet the kitties or not?”

Julia frowned but seemed swayed by the prospect of playing with cats. When Alfred went to pick Dick up, however, she shook her head and pointed to the door.

“You want to hold Jason?” Alfred said, surprised.

“He’s lonely,” Julia explained, and Alfred reluctantly opened the door and herded a sleepy Jason out into the sitting room. Dick harrumphed and trotted upstairs in search of Bruce—leaving girl and tabby to acquaint themselves with each other.

“Le minou est très mignon,” Julia said, sitting cross-legged on the floor and letting Jason sprawl across her lap. While he wasn’t exactly anti-social, Jason’s cuddling limit usually ran to about thirty seconds. But Julia was either small enough not to be a threat or warm enough for the drowsy cat, because he simply purred and let her stroke his brilliant orange coat all she liked.

Smiling in the dim light of the sitting room, she looked so much like Marie it hurt.

“Maman’s going to be fine,” Julia whispered to Jason, her voice low. “She’s always going off on her own. And she’s strong, too. She'll be fine. Elle ira bien."

Herding her upstairs for bedtime was painful but necessary, and Alfred couldn't help but try and reach out once more. When they arrived at her door, he turned and said: “I’m sure Marie… your Maman will finish her mission soon. But I’m glad to have been able to meet you in person, Julia.”

She didn’t say anything. She just hunched over, expression as surly as Bruce’s whenever Alfred dragged a comb through his thick fur, and Alfred resisted the urge to wince.

“Get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Alfred stepped back and let Julia slip into her guest room and shut the door. He took a deep breath. He wanted to tuck her in and read her stories and watch her eyes flutter closed. He wanted to soothe her brow and tell her everything was okay, but it wasn’t his place. It might not ever be his place.

“Go bother Bruce,” he whispered irritably when he backed up and found Dick tangled with his feet.

“ _Meew?”_ Dick said, as if sensing Alfred’s conflicted emotion. Alfred nudged him away and stalked back downstairs, and he wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed when the cat didn’t follow him. George looked up, saw his face, and then went back to his transmitting device. Alfred went for the brandy. No use not to, with how painful things had become.

\--

Life with Julia was to Alfred what life was undoubtedly like life with Jason to Dick: just with a lot less clawing and fighting and blood spattering onto a Wayne heirloom carpet.

“Eggs,” Alfred said over breakfast and was promptly ignored. He certainly knew how George felt now during their missions, because teasing conversation out with Julia was like pulling teeth. Pulling teeth from a kid screaming bloody murder the whole time, and maybe with a few yowling cats in the background.

“No sign of anyone dangerous coming for her yet,” George had said just before he left for Boston via sleazy rental car. “All you have to do is wait for Marie to come pick her up. And _try_ to talk to her this next week, yeah? She’s never going to open up if you don’t drop the formalities; you’re not _her_ butler.”

Alfred cleared the table and was too far away to stop Julia from flicking a large piece of scrambled egg on to the floor. Jason came ambling over and lapped it up, and she _knew_ the cats weren’t supposed to eat human food.

“Walk,” Julia turned to Alfred when he returned.

“You fed the cat eggs,” Alfred crossed his arms.

“No I didn’t.”

“Yes you did.”

“I just flicked it onto the floor. Jason came and ate it himself.”

“Julia,” Alfred said in a warning tone, and the girl just sniffed and hauled Jason into her arms.

“ _Walk_ ,” she repeated—and Alfred shut his mouth with a click. He shouldn’t reward such bratty behavior, but he couldn’t help it.

He wanted her to _like_ him, and it was to be his downfall.

“They’ve been playing with that Siamese Cat more often,” Julia offered in a rare show of conversation once they stopped at the closest park. Alfred glanced over to where Bruce and Jason were indeed chasing a pretty Siamese cat by the edge of the fountain. “They played with her yesterday too.”

It was unusual to see Bruce without Dick nearby, even if Jason’s presence was a natural deterrent. He raised a brow when the master of the house pounced onto the girl cat, legs tangling… and then she was off again, gait playful as the two tomcats chased her about.

"Dick doesn’t like her,” Julia informed him calmly, like he wasn't perfectly aware of how protective the younger cat could be over the Wayne scion. “He doesn’t seem to like a lot of other cats.”

“ _Mow_ ,” Bruce trotted over with the female cat in tow. Alfred almost worried he wanted him to adopt yet another feline into their quickly growing family, except this cat had a collar. A fancy, jewel-encrusted collar that glinted in the sunlight, and its wearer looked far too well-groomed to be anything but a pet.

“Talia,” he read off her tag. “Well, you’re quite the debutante, aren’t you? Your taste is as impeccable as always, Master Bruce, but I’m afraid you’ll have to cut your date short. We’re heading home.”

There was a bit of grumbling and huffing, but Bruce and Jason returned easily enough. Alfred experienced a moment of panic when they scoured the park and failed to find Dick, until Julia dragged him back to where they’d parked their car and found their wayward cat curled up into a ball on its roof.

“You had me worried _sick,”_ he scolded Dick as he lifted him into his arms. "Honestly! In _this_ park, too!" Dick meowed sulkily and slumped in his hold until they settled into the car. He immediately hid under the cupholder.

"He really doesn't like that cat," Julia said. “Her owner must be rich. Have you seen him?"

“Plenty of cats like going through the park, Julia,” Alfred said, ignoring Bruce’s attempt to draw Dick out and the resultant spitting he got in return. “Including those belonging to the Gotham elite. Leave him alone, Master Bruce. He’s not going to come out with you poking at him.”

Bruce glowered but jumped back onto the seat, where he curled up beside a yawning Jason. Alfred glanced at the silent, distant child sitting beside the cats; at the twitching tail poking out from under the cupholders, and at the reminder on his dashboard that he had a five o’ clock meeting with Lucius later that afternoon.

He reached over and turned the radio onto the classical channel, and drove home to the sound of singing violins.

\--

He found Dick batting a squeaky mouse over to Bruce later that day, argument clearly over. He envied the easy way Dick could chew on the toy and bound over to Bruce with pride; how Bruce, despite his own moods, at least tolerated the cat's playfulness.

He also found the dinner he'd carefully prepared for Julia in the trash—along with the girl herself nowhere to be found. He finally spotted her on the back porch, Jason licking his paws beside her. Waiting.

He slipped back into the shadows.

Waiting to be whisked away once more.

\--

“There are plenty of ways to kill a cat,” a member of the Wayne Enterprises board of directors said from across the table. Alfred looked up from his file, face blank. “Most of which are accidental.”

“Are you suggesting something, Mr. Cross?” he asked.

“Simply stating truth. Car accidents, dog attacks… many things can go wrong. Which begs the question—why haven’t either of you two established a proper chain of succession if our beloved Master Bruce should perish?”

“Then Master Richard would inherit the company.”

“And if something happens to Master Richard?”

“Then the appointment falls to the board,” Alfred said, and narrowed his eyes when the man across the table smiled. It didn't reach his eyes, to absolutely no one's surprise. “As you well know. I’m sorry, but was there a point to this line of questioning?”

“No point,” Mr. Cross shrugged. “Just making conversation until our dear Mr. Fox returns. There he is now. Lucius, have you made your decision?”

“My mind was made before our deliberation,” Lucius said, refusing to take Mr. Cross’s hand when offered. Undeterred, the board member simply put his hand back in his pocket. “Partnering with Lexcorp would be a grave mistake.”

“Partnering with Lexcorp will bring us needed revenue,” Mr. Cross said. “Money that can help fund your precious animal rights cause. You’re letting prejudice blind you, old man.”

“ _I’m_ letting _my_ prejudice blind me?” Lucius raised a brow, and Alfred resisted the urge to cough. It certainly was preposterous, given that Lucius was the only black shareholder in the room right now.

“This is simply courtesy, Lucius. I don’t need your permission,” Mr. Cross said, voice going from charming to icy. “With enough of our shares pooled together into a single entity, I’m sure we can challenge the majority shares held by the esteemed Master Wayne, whom you are representing by proxy. It’ll be messy, though. Very public.”

“Then come back once you’ve gathered your shareholders,” Lucius told him, undeterred. “Until then, my decision stands. We are not partnering with Lexcorp on our next project. Wayne Enterprises is fully capable of supplying our own research and clientele. If that’s all, then Alfred and I are running late. Goodbye, Mr. Cross.”

“Goodbye,” Mr. Cross said. He tilted his head at Alfred. “Mister Pennyworth.”

“They’re not even being subtle,” Alfred told Lucius as they piled into the car. He didn’t usually accompany him back to Wayne Manor, but with the state the other shareholders were in Alfred wasn’t surprised that Lucius wanted to be cautious in case of eavesdroppers. “How sure are you that they’ll hurt Master Bruce?”

“Relatively sure,” Lucius said. It'd been the entire reason he'd asked Alfred to attend this meeting, after all. Use that intelligence training to assess risk, to read marks. “Though not how or when. Still, I would be on guard if I were you…”

“Already am,” Alfred said. He didn’t bother explaining that he’d been on guard since Julia had arrived. Since Marie had promised to come back in two weeks and it’d already been three, and that every day she refused to appear Julia grew more and more surly.

They’d even gotten into a screaming match before Alfred had to head over to WE headquarters. It was galling and shameful and Alfred wanted so desperately to connect with his girl somehow. Even if she didn’t feel the same.

“You’re not my _dad_!” she screamed at him, red-faced, when he tried sending her to her room for letting the cats outside in the mud without his permission. “ _My_ papa is dead! He protected me and cared for me and _wanted_ me, not like _you_!”

“Do not presume to know how I feel!” Alfred had snapped back, and Julia’s expression had crumpled at once. He’d put his head in his hands once she fled, because she was _six_. Bruce, who’d been hiding in the corner of the room and watching their collective meltdown, meowed and followed her out.

Every fiber of his being wanted to run after her and apologize, but he’d already been running late by then. He could only hope and pray that the manor would still be in one piece when he returned.

It looked that way as they headed up the driveway, parked in the garage, and ambled up towards the sitting room.

And then he found his little girl sleeping in the hallway, head pillowed on Bruce’s belly and Dick spread across her lap like a blanket. Jason was sandwiched between her side and the wall, vibrating snores sending ripples through her frizzled dark hair. Bruce cracked open an eye and glared at him as he approached.

“I didn’t know you had company,” Lucius said.

“It’s—well.” Alfred hesitated, and his friend waved a hand.

“Go on, take care of her. Our talk can wait until morning.”

“You’re so busy, Lucius…”

“Not busy enough to intrude on a little girl’s time with her father,” Lucius said, voice firm. Alfred felt appropriately chastised; Lucius had two kids himself. “I’ll settle myself in a guest room, god knows I’ve stayed here enough. Master Bruce,” he bowed to the cat before slipping away, and then Alfred was alone.

Except for the cats. And Julia. Bruce continued to glare, and Alfred ran a hand through his—admittedly thinning—hair. “I just… I don’t exactly know how to do this, Master Bruce. I've wanted her for so long, and now that I have her... everything's gone so pear-shaped.”

“ _Mrr,”_ Bruce said, and carefully squirmed out from under Julia’s weight. He nudged a sleepy Dick off her lap and pawed at his ears until the smaller cat stumbled onto his feet. Jason continued snoring, as difficult to wake up as ever, and Bruce didn’t even attempt the task. Instead, he stared at Alfred.

This cat. Alfred let out a small sigh and gently lifted Julia into his arms. He carried her to her room, cats following like little black shadows behind him, and settled her in bed. Tucked her in like he’d wanted to that first night; kissed her forehead and watched her sleeping face.

He needed to burn this image into his mind, because god knows if he’ll get this chance again. If Marie picked her up— _when_ Marie picked her up—and whisked her away, would that be the last of it? She'd disappear to France and Alfred would return to his cats, and these past weeks would have barely mattered to any of them?

“I want to see you grow up,” he admitted to her quietly. Her accusations still rung in his head, had driven themselves like knives in his heart the moment they’d slipped from her lips. He’d always wanted her. And yet she grew up thinking he didn’t, that he viewed her as some burden—and his absence had just let her go on thinking that.

 _What is a promise to a child’s well-being? Empty words._ Jacques had told him. And instead of rising to the task, Alfred had simply handed Julia back to Jacques like he was doing her a favor.

And now Jacques was dead.

“It’s not that simple. I can’t just leave you,” he told Bruce, who was laying on the ground beside a dozing Dick. “You and Dick and Jason…”

Bruce flicked his tail.

It wasn't a question: the MI would always welcome him back with open arms. It would certainly be easier for him to see Julia if he returned home to Britain. To demand that Marie gave him time to see her, because she was his daughter too. He could push and she would give in—would’ve always given in, if only he’d tried.

With a sigh, Alfred stood up and flicked off the lights. The cats refused to move an inch, and so he closed the door behind him. He left his little girl safe from the demons haunting his thoughts, in the hands of his capable and loyal cat family.

“Really, Master Jason,” he sighed when he came across the lone tabby sprawled across the floor. After only a little indecision, he hauled the slumbering cat into his arms and carried him back to his quarters. No one should sleep alone tonight.

No one should be alone.

\--

“Eggs,” Alfred said the next morning after finishing an early meeting with Lucius. The man had refused to stay for breakfast, again citing family time prerogative—which meant it was breakfast as usual, ending once more with Julia’s unfinished eggs on her plate.

“Don’t like scrambled eggs,” Julia said. It was the first time she’d actually responded instead of ignoring him, and Alfred paused.

“Then how do you like them?”

“Sunny-side up,” Julia nudged the scrambled eggs around on her plate with a fork. “ _Runny_ yolk. Not hard.”

“Like your mother,” Alfred said, and the girl gave him a startled look. “You know, I can make a mean fried egg. Allow me a moment in the kitchen and I’ll show you.”

Julia’s eyes went big and wide when Alfred came back with a fried egg on a piece of toast, the yolk just solid enough to hold its circular shape but runny enough to spill over when she lifted up the bread.

“ _Mrowr,_ ” Jason said mournfully when Julia ate the entire egg and toast instead of giving him the scraps.

"C'est délicieux,” she said, sounding even more bewildered than before. She’d come out of her room with two cats draped over her shoulders, looking dumbfounded that Alfred had actually carried her to bed instead of leaving her to sleep on the hardwood floor. She didn’t mention the argument, and Alfred didn’t either. Pennyworth silence at its best.

“I’m glad you told me,” Alfred said, voice even. He wasn’t just talking about the eggs. “You’re right, Julia. I don’t know a lot about you right now, but I want to. I’ve always wanted you, even if I… if I believed your wellbeing would be better in the hands of others. But that’s my fault, not yours.”

Julia blinked rapidly and looked down at her lap.

“I’m not trying to replace Jacques,” Alfred said. “I can’t. But if he were here, he’d yell at me if I gave up just like that. He loved you and protected you, and now that he’s gone I’m sure he’d want you to continue being loved and protected. So until your Maman comes to pick you up… I’d like to get to know you.”

Julia didn’t say anything for a long moment. Finally, she leaned down and hauled Jason into her lap. He meowed in complaint but didn’t try and wriggle away. She pressed her mouth to his furry head and said, voice low, “Wanna take the cats for a walk.”

Alfred gave her a small smile and held out a hand. Julia adjusted Jason so he was slung over one arm instead of two. Then… then, she carefully put her small hand in his.

\--

And things were almost,  _almost_ okay. Even if the third week passed with no word from Marie, it simply gave Alfred more time to make up for weeks of silence. To learn of Julia's favorite foods, books, animals—to not quite tuck her into bed, but to offer himself as a source of comfort and support. To learn how to be a father, because it wasn't a natural skill borne from necessity. It was one honed by want.

And then, just when he felt like he'd gotten a hold this new equilibrium, the disquieting peace finally broke.

\--

It started with a thunderstorm.

“We can’t take her back with us,” Alfred shouted at Bruce and his familiar Siamese beau, trying to shield himself from the light rain that had cut their walk short. “She has an owner.”

“Mow,” Bruce said, just as a bolt of lightning struck through the clouds—and the heavens opened up and _dumped_ rain onto their heads. Which wouldn't have been a problem a year ago, but Dick. Dick, clearly remembering his months-long experience after a rainstorm just like this one, fell completely apart. He clawed up Alfred’s sleeve and tried his best to burrow into his shoulders, and Alfred spent so much effort trying to calm the cat down and herd the rest into the car that he didn’t realize he’d collected an extra cat in his haste.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t _not_ reward Bruce’s bratty behavior by tossing the Siamese out into the pouring rain. It was inhumane and not classy, and clearly Talia was a classy lady.

“Honestly, Master Bruce, it is one thing to bring back strays and orphans but taking a pet cat is called _kidnapping_ ,” he settled, frowning hard at the pretty Siamese licking her paw on her perch on the windowsill. She seemed completely unfazed by the thunderstorm raging outside, in complete contrast to Dick’s continued distress. “I am ashamed.”

“Mrrow,” Bruce answered, unrepentant. Still, he did seem concerned over Dick’s shivering form on the rug and trotted over to settle beside the smaller cat. Dick cuddled against him at once, mewing like he was a kitten again—and Jason, in a shocking turn of events, wandered over and bracketed him in from the other side.

“They _do_ care,” Julia said, watching the three cats cuddling together. Alfred finally managed to start the fire in the fireplace and went to fetch a blanket from the cabinet. He draped it over Julia’s shoulders, and the girl surprised him by then settling the blanket over the cats. “See, they don’t have to be apart. You just wanted to cuddle with Dick, didn’t you, Jason?”

“Mr,” Jason complained, almost affronted at the gooey implications of such an act. The protest was tempered when Dick mewed again, even more piteously than before, and Jason turned and licked his ears. And while the smaller tuxedo cat didn’t lean into his touch like he would with Bruce, he didn’t bat him away either. Another crash of thunder, another shiver and consequent lick from the cat huddle.

Clearly, the world was well and truly ending.

“We’ll bring you back to the park tomorrow,” he told Talia while heading upstairs. He’d decided to leave the dozing Julia near her favorite cats, though not before draping a second blanket over her sleeping form on the couch. Talia, who still hadn’t moved from the windowsill, just regarded him with big green eyes. “I know Bruce has soft spot for you, but we’ve got more than enough cats in this household. And from your fancy collar, I assume your owner must be worried sick.”

Talia said nothing, not even a small meow. Just stared and stared with those unsettling green eyes, a gaze he felt follow him all the way up to his room and to the safety of the dark.

\--

Four hours later, at three o’ clock in the morning, he startled awake to the loud ringing of the phone by his bed.

“Good lord, man, it is _three_ in the bloody morning,” he grumbled, picking up the receiver.

“Alfie! He’s in Gotham—the assassin, he’s been in Gotham the whole time—”

Alfred shot up at once. “George?”

“Right under our noses. A tip. Thought it was a joke, but looking into it... shoulda known those old coots would want to unseat Mr. Boots, would go to any lengths—”

“George, explain yourself,” Alfred said. “What are you talking about?”

“We thought the assassin would track Julia through Marie’s connections in New England, would try and find and kidnap Julia from an outdoor event where it’s easy to vanish. We never thought he’d try and take her from your home. Which he couldn’t have done if he didn’t partner up with someone else trying to stage a home break-in—those Wayne Enterprise assholes. Two targets for the price of one, and all they needed was an inside source—”

Suddenly, a gunshot pierced the silence of the house: loud and unwanted and slicing through the feeling of safety and belonging like a knife through butter.

“He’s here,” Alfred whispered—and hung up the phone without missing a beat. He went and loaded his old military gun, the one he kept illegally in his bottom-most drawer.

Then, with a steady calmness he’d almost forgotten he once had, he strolled downstairs.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I thought you were just a cat butler,” Julia told him seriously._

“Mr. Pennyworth. You took much longer to arrive than expected,” the man standing in front of the flickering fireplace said in a conversational tone. He was quite a bit older than Alfred, but no less deadly, and was conspicuously missing his left eye. “I suppose domestic life has indeed tamed the Great Pennyworth of the MI6. A shame, too. It would have been more… entertaining to find a better way into the mansion than to send Talia.”

Alfred didn’t move an inch, though his gaze flickered down to where the Siamese cat sat unblinkingly by the assassin’s ankles. He glanced over at the window Talia had been sitting on. Unlocked. Half pushed open.

Two targets for the price of one, because it took knowledge of the Wayne Manor cats to even attempt this avenue of infiltration.

“Mr. Cross hired you?” Alfred stalled.

“Hired? No. We simply share similar goals. _He_ wanted these two black and white cats to suffer… natural accidents, necessitating their capture,” the man nodded over to where Dick and Bruce were locked in respective carriers. A single, smoky-edged bullet hole stood out glaringly in front of Bruce’s carrier—perhaps the real reason both cats were so silent. “I wanted access to the manor for my quarry. Mademoiselle Marie’s little girl…” and he pressed the mouth of gun even more firmly to his girl’s temple. “Beautiful Julia. Slippery, too. Coming to the states wasn’t easy, mon cher, especially not with Marie’s death complicating matters.”

“You’re lying,” Julia whispered, voice only trembling a little. Alfred itched to raise his hand and put a bullet through the assassin’s forehead, because he had a _gun_ to his girl’s head. Had had a gun there since the moment Alfred had walked into the scene, standing front and center in the sitting room clearly expecting him. Waiting for him. Cats in their carriers and Julia tightly captured in his hands, he could have escaped… but Mr. Cross always had a flair for the dramatic.

And the necessary.

“If you want to kill me, then get it over with,” Alfred said, voice as conversational as his adversary’s. He caught movement from the corner of his eye but refused to glance over, if only to prevent him from catching on. “But you won’t learn Marie’s location from any of us.”

“Marie is dead.”

“Clearly not,” Alfred drawled, taking a step closer. The gunman stepped back, pulling Julia with him like a human shield. “Or you wouldn’t still be after Julia. She’s only as useful as a hostage to bend Marie to your will. Now you can simply take your little courtesan and walk right out and no one will have to know about this. That, or we can end this the hard way.”

“Strange, given that I have the advantage here,” the gunman said—moments before a furious orange fluffball crashed into his head from the fireplace mantle.

“Duck!” Alfred shouted, and Julia _just_ barely dodged the stray bullet fired. “Go, Julia! Get upstairs!”

“The cats,” she said, face blotchy with tears. Alfred cursed and rushed to put himself between her and the enraged gunman, because Jason could only hold him off for so long. Not that the tabby wasn’t a force to be reckoned with.

Clearly, all that time hunting and killing rats translated well in trying to claw a man’s face off—even if, once the surprise wore off, all the gunman had to do was grab Jason by the scruff and throw him to the ground like a ragdoll.

“Children and cats and old men,” he raged, firing once, twice, in Alfred’s direction. He dodged the first but was nicked by the second, and then threw himself bodily onto him in an enraged tussle that sent the gun spinning into the air.

It was like riding a bicycle: that MI6 training came back so quickly he was pummeling the man with his fists a second later.

“Barge into _my_ home,” he roared, his own gun forgotten as his fists beat the man’s face red, “Threaten _my_ girl and _my_ cats—hurting my family like it’s a given. Don’t you _dare!_ ”

“Papa!” Julia’s voice cried out. It wasn’t the first time she’d tried breaking through his rage, but it was the first she’d called him _Papa_. Alfred stopped. Saw the mess he’d made of the assassin’s face and stumbled backwards, breathing hard.

Julia had managed to free Dick at least, who was going toe-to-toe with Talia with a ferocity that rivaled Jason’s rat fury. She abandoned Bruce in his carrier to walk towards Alfred, hands up.

“Papa, it’s okay,” Julia repeated, and Alfred’s breath caught. He staggered towards her, arms reaching out…

Julia’s eyes went wide with horror. Alfred snapped his head back in time to see the gunman grab a hold of Alfred’s abandoned gun and fire. Not in time to react. To move. A single bullet could steal the life from his girl’s heart, and he couldn’t stop it.

 _He_ couldn’t stop it, but clearly animal instincts were faster than human ones.

And he could only watch as Jason fell to the ground: red mixed into the orange, bleeding out on the dark sitting room rug.

\--

“Alfred,” George burst into the waiting room like a whirlwind, tie backwards and an unflattering red splashed across his cheeks. He grabbed Alfred’s shoulders and said, “Thank god you’re all alright.”

“We’re not,” Alfred didn’t look up at him, choosing instead to look forward at the empty chairs ahead. It was six in the bloody morning, of course there weren’t any other patients.

George looked at him disbelievingly. “Deathstroke is a top assassin from the League of Shadows—he’s killed _dozens_ of men in less than an hour, Alfie. I almost thought I was too late when I called. That he’d already… well. His prerogative to take hostages instead of kill was a blessing in—”

“Jason’s in surgery,” Alfred snapped. “And he’s scared Julia witless. _None_ of this is a blessing.”

George paused to take in the little French girl petting Dick in her lap, singing a soft tune to the cat. He turned and looked at Bruce pacing the floor, who still hadn’t let up on the low, humming growl that only heightened the sensation that the white walls were closing in on them.

George didn’t say anything as he sat in the chair beside him, even if Alfred knew he wanted to. He didn’t argue that he’d likely broken traffic laws in three states booking it from Boston to New Jersey. That it’d been a freaky coincidence that he’d pieced together the WE board’s combined scheme with the League to infiltrate Wayne Manor—or if it had been a coincidence, or just a well-planted tip. That they had indeed been lucky that no one had been killed outright. That Julia was still here, as well as the two cats the Wayne Fortune rode upon.

Except Jason might still die, and Jason was family. Even if he was ‘just a cat,’ he was family.

“Marie,” Alfred said. He needed to hear it confirmed.

“Still alive and very close to handing intel over to the right agents. Once she accomplishes that, she can pick Julia up.” He definitely noticed Alfred stiffening at that. A delicate pause, and then an indelicate: “Alfred, if you’d like…”

“The League?”

"Alfred."

"The League of Shadows, George."

“They don’t kill unless the mission calls for it,” George said. "Killing Marie would stop her from spreading intel, but if that intel is already spread… well. One good thing about heartless assassins is the _heartless_ part of it. Revenge isn’t really their MO.”

“Deathstroke?”

“Unfortunately, the laws regarding R’as’s assassins are… slippery,” George said. “We’ve collected him, but neither the British nor American agencies can keep them from being extradited back overseas.”

“You’re going to just _let him go_ ,” Alfred hissed, turning in his chair. “Back when I was serving…”

“You haven’t served in years,” George’s voice was sharp. “These aren’t run of the mill criminals! These are experienced, rich assassins that have been lurking about for centuries. Negotiations regarding them is complicated enough without civilians getting involved.”

“I’m not—” Alfred snapped his mouth shut and turned his head. He took a deep breath. Finally, he said in a far calmer voice. “So he goes back to a life of killing. Marie takes Julia back to France. What happens then? What happens when the next Deathstroke comes after Julia because of some blasted mission Marie’s gone off on?”

“That, my friend, is in your hands,” George said, and there was nothing more to say.

\--

Jason came home an entire week later: weak and shaky, but thankfully not dead. Julia, who’d been drawing ‘Get Well’ cards for the cat, tossed them all onto the floor in favor of wrapping her arms around his furry neck. Or what she could grab of his neck, given the blood red plastic cone keeping him from tearing out the sutures on his stomach and side.

“I’m sorry you got hurt, Jay,” she teared up, pressing her face into his orange fur and ignoring Jason’s annoyed meows. “You saved me, and what if I couldn’t say thanks. Thanks, merci, tu es le meilleur. Look, I made you cards… and a new toy…” and, as Alfred had reluctantly agreed to, a bag of treats that immediately caught Jason’s attention.

“You _just_ got cleared for solid food again,” he informed the tabby scarfing down the treats in Julia’s hand. Not too forcefully, though, because Jason was _home_.

Still, Leslie’s rules upon releasing her patient were clear. Three weeks of no climbing, hunting, walking or any of Jason’s other favorite activities; all of which Alfred had prepared himself to enforce at every moment. But Jason, a cat of many surprises, didn’t bother trying to pull out his sutures.

He ended up lying in a puddle of sunshine in Dick’s favorite sun room, and Dick… Dick _let him_.

If Alfred had known it would take Jason getting miserably ill to get Dick to pay positive attention to him, he would’ve poisoned the tabby himself a month ago. Injured, red-coned cats seemed to flip some Dick’s Paternal Caring Mode switch, because there he was grooming Jason’s ears and bringing him food and lying close by like a furry, purring water heater.

Even Bruce came out of hiding long enough to watch over Jason, not to mention Julia’s constant desire to pick him up. Despite his grumbling, the orange tabby soaked all the fawning attention up like a sponge.

“Two weeks,” Julia abruptly brought up one night. Alfred looked up from the account books. “Maman was supposed to pick me up by now. The man… the man’s gone. Uncle George took him away.”

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Alfred said, because it wasn’t like he or George were going to go into the messy politics of Deathstroke’s “disappearance” during transit. But George _had_ told her that her Maman would come by within a week. “All missions go awry. Why, one time your Uncle George and I got lost for three days on a simple reconnaissance mission in Wales. _Wales_. The seagulls alone…”

“Wait,” Julia’s eyes went big and round. “You used to work with _Uncle George_?”

“How do you think I know your mother and George?” Alfred adopted an affronted look despite his honest surprise. After losing his temper with Deathstroke in front of her, he’d assumed she’d put the pieces together. “I was quite an agent, you know!”

“I thought you were just a cat butler,” Julia told him seriously.

“Well—yes, that’s true now. A promise to my father… your grandfather. But I was an agent before that. It’s how I met your mother. I was on an undercover mission in France, and your mother and I were after the same criminal…” and Alfred found himself getting swept up in telling the girl his adventures.

She’d been so sullen before that they never really touched on this part of his past, but once started he couldn’t stop. The danger! The mystery! The utter satisfaction he’d had when he did his Queen and Country proud.

It was enough to distract Julia from Marie’s absence for now, even if it brought back memories he’d rather forget.

“ _Mrowr_ ,” a chorus called for him after he carried Julia to bed. He raised a brow at Bruce, Dick _and_ Jason all peering at him from the doorway. It would’ve been disturbing if Jason’s ridiculous red cone wasn’t smushing Dick into the floor.

“You’ve had your dinner,” he said. He didn’t feel like getting out of the chair he’d settled in by his daughter’s bed. Undeterred, the cats wandered into the room and curled up on top of his person: Dick around his neck, Bruce by his feet, Jason on his lap.

“Master Jason,” Alfred said reproachfully when he crashed into a lamp on his way up and gracelessly smacked Alfred in the chin with his red cone.

“Hrrmss,” Jason made an indiscriminate noise, and then curled up resolutely on top of him. Protective. Warm.

It wasn’t a new scene, but it was the freest one he had in ages. He felt light. Calm. Like he could stand on top of the world and raise hell like he once did, in a time when he feared nothing within his own mind.

\--

Marie arrived two days later. She was older, thinner and far more assured than she’d been nearly a decade ago, but she was still that beautiful Mademoiselle Marie Alfred loved.

“Alfred,” she said, dark skin nearly glowing in the light shining on the doorstep.

“Marie.”

“Where is my daughter.”

“ _Our_ daughter is asleep in her room,” Alfred said, not bothering to mince words. He stepped aside and let the Frenchwoman sweep into the Wayne Manor. “I’m sure you can wait a night to spirit her off.”

“I do not want her staying here a second longer. She belongs in la France, avec moi.”

“Marie, you’re an international spy with an enemy list several feet long,” Alfred refused to back down. “This is just the first of many future incidents, and Jacques is gone.”

“Then I will find some other friend in France. She does not belong to the _states_.”

“She doesn’t belong to me,” Alfred corrected her thinly veiled statement. “Which may have worked if she had been here for a few days, but it’s been nearly a month and a half. I assure you, she’s done quite well here in these 'states.'"

Marie worked her jaw. Finally, she said: “We had an agreement.”

“Yes,” Alfred conceded. He stood in front of the staircase when Marie made a move towards it. “We had an agreement, once, but clearly things have changed. Someone once told me, ‘What is a promise to a child’s well-being? Empty words.’ That’s what they are, Marie.” A deep breath, like Marie wasn’t staring at him like she was seeing him for the first time.

Of course she was. Alfred was a tenacious agent and loyal citizen of his country, but he’d always let Marie run him over in more personal affairs. Him holding his own in this matter was like a cat walking on two legs.

“I’ll let her stay the night,” she said, voice offering no leeway. “But we leave in the morning.”

“The guest room’s two doors down,” Alfred said, and Marie stalked down the hall without another word.

\--

It wasn’t until the cab had arrived and Marie was tightly holding onto Julia’s hand that she softened enough to become recognizable.

“Thank you, Alfred,” she said, voice entirely genuine. Still, she seemed surprised when Julia turned back and gave Alfred an abrupt hug.

“Julia,” Alfred said. He wasn’t good with affection either, but he did his best by patting her head.

“Bye Brucie, Dickie, Jay,” she waved at each of the cats who’d come out to see their tiny, temporary girl-kitten goodbye. “Come visit France one day, oui? C'est incroyable.”

“I can get you your own cat,” Marie told her in a low voice. “Now come _on_.”

“I’ll see you,” Alfred said with a small smile, even when Marie narrowed her eyes at him out of Julia’s sight. “I’m thrilled to have met you, Julia, and I look forward to seeing how you’ll grow up in the coming years.”

“Moi aussi, Papa,” the girl said, stopping whatever rant was building in her mother’s throat with a single word.

“We’ll talk,” Marie said, and then pressed her hand to the small of Julia’s back. And just like that, Alfred watched his daughter disappear in a cab down the Wayne Manor path—nearly as suddenly as she’d swooped into his life to begin with.

\--

But he _was_ going to see her again.

\--

Keeping busy was always his go-to distraction. With half the board arrested or resigned, Wayne Enterprises was chaos personified. Lucius needed help, and then George called asking for a favor, and then Jason pulled his stitches trying to wriggle on top of the fridge as he usually did. Bruce went back to scuffling angrily for rats and trying to drag Dick along with him, and Dick's Gotham popularity earned him a stalker in the park.

“The _last_ cat that snuck into the manor was actually working for the enemy,” Alfred informed the black munchkin cat he found hiding beneath the seat in the Wayne car. The cat just blinked at him, as still as a statue. The only sign it lived was a slight flick of its ear. “Tell me one good reason I shouldn’t just toss you out right now.”

Still nothing. Alfred drove back to the park, placed the black munchkin cat on a bench, and then came home. Except the next day the cat was back—this time hiding so well that Alfred almost failed to notice the extra pair of blue eyes peeking at him from between Dick and Bruce.

He picked the cat up and gracelessly placed him out on the lawn. He locked the doors and windows and frowned sternly at the three cats staring at him from the living room… and came downstairs the next morning to find the munchkin cat back indoors and picking a fight with Jason, of all people.

Well, less of a fight and more of a you-can’t-catch-me game that clearly drove the orange tabby crazy.

He'd returned the cat so many times it felt like a game, and clearly the munchkin was winning. It tagged alongside Dick at every moment, and despite Alfred's best efforts _always_ found itself back in his kitchen, stealing food from Jason's bowl and swiping the larger cat's nose when he hissed at him. Three cats was far too many to deal with, and Alfred was determined not to care for a fourth.

And then one day he woke up and found two pairs of eyes staring holes into his face: Dick and the munchkin both curled on his chest, warm and vibrating and clearly staging an intervention.

“ _Mrr,_ ” Dick poked his nose with a paw and then nuzzled the munchkin's side. He then stared Alfred down with his pretty blue eyes, and forget puppy dog eyes. Kitty cat eyes were a near lethal weapon in Dick's arsenal, and Alfred felt his resolve crack just a bit.

“I suppose I did allow Master Bruce to keep Jason,” he sighed, finally waving the white flag. Dick beamed at him, even when he plucked the munchkin cat up and looked him over. He noted the overall cleanliness of his fur, paws, face. The clear indication that he wasn’t a feral, which was obvious enough given his preference for homes and human-populated parks.

He only pawed at his new collar once after being outfitted, though was quickly distracted when Dick pounced onto him in clear play.

“Master Timothy is _smaller_ than you, Master Dick,” Alfred scolded, because Dick had been the smallest cat for far too long and never had to worry about squishing his targets. Dick rolled off of Tim and pawed his side instead, until the munchkin cat darted out like a furry rocket.

Then, the chase was on.

\--

Master Timothy, and then Master Damian. The tiny kitten had nearly upended the entire household's tenuous balance until Dick took the scrawny thing under his wing, to Bruce's obvious discomfort and shame. The chaos was distracting, but all distractions came to an end. Thankfully, by that point Alfred had placed most things in order.

He had one last appointment to make.

\--

Selina Kyle had had quite a few strange interviews in her life, but nothing compared to being led into one of the fanciest studies she’d ever seen… just to come face-to-face with a cat. A massive black cat with a pure white muzzle, and Selina liked cats. She really, really did, except this cat seemed to stare into her very soul with those big blue eyes.

“Master Bruce Wayne,” the butler Alfred introduced him with deadly sincerity. Selina opened her mouth. Closed it.

“Nice to meet you,” she finally managed, and she could’ve sworn the cat actually _nodded_ at her. It wasn’t like she didn’t know of Gotham’s wealthiest kitty, but she’d thought she’d at least speak to the actual owner of the estate over the figurehead cat. Or maybe the cat was actually in charge…? “I thought this was a house-sitting job?”

“It is,” the butler said. He beckoned her with a hand without further explanation, and Selina had no choice but to follow. “Come along, Miss Kyle. It’s time to meet the rest of the family.”

Despite the absurdity of the situation, Selina quite enjoyed meeting the far cuter, far more amicable cats lurking about the massive manor. Master Richard was a beautiful long-haired tuxedo cat that had come barreling over to inspect their new guest with a loud racket of excited meows. Master Jason was a far cooler orange tabby, flicking his striped tail from his vantage point on top of the refrigerator. He seemed to take a better liking to her when she pulled out a treat from the counter and handed it over, even licking her fingers in appreciation.

The two younger cats were harder to find. They eventually spotted Master Timothy sleeping underneath the couch, his pure black coat melting him almost entirely into the shadows. He cracked open an eye and seemed to stare into the deepest recesses of her mind… and then he closed it and went back to sleep.

“Master Damian is probably with Master Dick,” Alfred told her, leading her back around to the sun room they’d first visited. Dick was indeed laying in the same sunny spot, his fluffy tail flicking back and forth. Rather than greet her as he’d done before, he just let out a meow and went back to grooming the squirming kitten in his paws. The fuzzy little thing couldn’t have been more than a month old, and he kept making angry chirping noises as he was thoroughly washed from head to toe.

She nixed her first assumption that it was Dick’s progeny when she got a closer look. He was black and white, yes, but had near identical patterning to the head of the household: Bruce Wayne himself.

“Bruce’s singleton,” Alfred said, crouching down by the cat and kitten and extending a hand. The kitten—Damian, Alfred had called him—tried crawling away, but Dick just grabbed him by the scruff and gracelessly plopped him into Alfred’s palm. “It’s a long story, but his mother’s owners weren't very happy about their purebred birthing a mixed kitten. And he _is_ a Wayne. Damian, don’t bite.”

“ _Mew_ ,” Damian angrily mewled, clambering all over Alfred’s hand in a bid to escape. Selina, undaunted by angry little kittens, took him from Alfred and lightly stroked his head.

“Oh, you’re feisty,” she cooed when he latched onto her finger with his sharp, tiny teeth. “Not a cuddlebug like this softie, huh? I like a bit of fire. Fire keeps you alive.”

Damian stopped squirming and stared up at her with big blue eyes. Selina smiled when the kitten chirped again. She could’ve held an entire conversation with the little creature if she didn’t feel an insistent paw clawing at her leg.

“ _Mow_ ,” Dick demanded, hauling himself up on his hind legs and nosing at Damian’s side. Before Selina could react, he suddenly scooped the kitten up by the neck and bounded away, Damian’s angry chirps echoing in his wake.

“He’s quite protective of Master Damian,” Alfred said apologetically, as if that wasn’t the cutest thing Selina had seen. “Not unlike how Master Bruce was with Dick when he was a kitten. But it seems like Damian likes you, which is a first, believe me.”

“Great,” Selina said. With introductions over, she wasn’t sure what was next on the agenda. “So is there more to the interview or…?”

“I need to discuss this with Master Bruce,” the butler said with clear sincerity. Having met the cat, Selina could better understand why Alfred would even bother. “But rest assured, we will get back to you by tomorrow morning. If I may fetch your coat?”

Selina left the elegant manor feeling wrong-footed and… charmed, was the word. She started her car and was surprised to see five pairs of cat eyes staring at her from one of the manor windows.

“Bye sweeties,” she waved at them all before driving back out towards the gate. Common sense told her to drive off and never look back, but Selina Kyle never was one to follow common sense.

That, and the pay for this gig was really good. Really, really good, and if there was anything Selina liked better than cats, it was money.

\--

“I’ll only be gone for two weeks,” Alfred told the crowd of meowing charges crowding around his snappy black boots and luggage case. “Selina’ll do a marvelous job taking care of you then. I need to file paperwork, tie up loose-ends… no, Bruce, not everything can be solved via the internet or fax. Now _be good_.”

It was difficult enough explaining himself to a bunch of spoiled cats; explaining things to George had been so much harder.

“Al, come on,” his old friend had said when he met up with him in Boston before his flight back to Heathrow. “Marie’s letting you see Julia; you can get your old job back. What more do you want?”

“I’m not the same man, George,” Alfred got straight to the point. “I don’t… I don’t need all that chaos anymore. The mystery, the danger. I want to be there for my family. Marie leaves Julia for weeks at a time, is constantly on the run from her enemies… that’s not the kind of life I want her to have. And if both of us are back in intelligence, it will be.”

“I’m talking about a desk job, not a field one.”

“You and I both know that’s a lie, old friend,” Alfred smiled. The furrow between George’s brow clearly meant he didn’t get it, but he wasn’t going to push. Another agent would have, perhaps, because Alfred was an asset the intelligence community would hate to lose. But George was a friend—had been his friend through trials and tribulations—and Alfred trusted in him to keep his happiness in mind.

“Good luck, then,” George had clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Remind me not to be within a hundred feet of your and Marie’s inevitable argument. In person, no less.”

“There’ll be an entire channel keeping you away,” Alfred said, not that that meant anything. Marie’s temper was notoriously fiery, and he wasn’t looking forward to confronting it straight on.

“ _Mow_ ,” Bruce gave him a final send-off. Alfred gently rubbed his head and smiled when the cat leaned into his touch. Encouragement. Warning. Because he’d never forgotten that first time they connected, all those years ago when a kitten Bruce had hidden beneath his old master’s covers. Family was precious. Family could be lost.

Bruce had built this capricious cat pack to replace the human family he once had.

Clearly, he expected Alfred to go on and do the same.

“It’s my job to scold _you_ , Master Bruce,” he whispered. Bruce butted his head against his knee and turned back to the manor, hustling the younger cats inside without a look back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

_epilogue_

 

“Les minous!” Julia shouted, bursting into the manor with bubbly excitement. She threw her luggage to the ground at once and scurried to the kitchen. “Where’s my Jay? Jason? There you are!”

“ _Mrowr_ ,” Jason complained but didn’t struggle when the girl knelt beside him and cuddled him tight. He wasn't wearing his red cone today. In an ironic twist, the red cone of miserableness and dirty, ungroomed fur had become one of Jason's favorite items. Even after Leslie had declared Jason a free cat and cut him loose from its plastic confines, he'd refused to let her throw it away and instead carried it home. Out of nostalgia, maybe.

Or because it was a good way to trap a spitting Damian when Jason thought him too annoying. Place a large book on the smaller end of the cone, and voila! Instant kitty cage.

“Is this Timothy? His legs are so short. Does that make you slower? Oh, c'est doux." She picked Tim up from his hiding place beside the grandfather clock.

"Julia, be careful," Alfred warned. He picked up her fallen luggage case and neatly placed it by the wall by the staircase. "If you _must_ roughhouse, please choose a larger cat. Jason, perhaps. He needs a bit of excitement.”

“I can roughhouse with him later,” Julia said dismissively. “Six _months_ , Papa! I can’t believe Maman's letting me stay for that long.”

Not without two shouting matches, a broken vase and a handful of threats. Alfred may have backed down once, but this was _their daughter_. He’d summoned up every ounce of patience he’d gathered from years of herding spoiled cats and stood tall before this fierce woman. This spitfire who’d blown through his life and career in a heartbeat, who gave him this child to care for.

“If anything happens to her, I _swear_ , Pennyworth,” she bared her teeth, and Alfred nodded.

“I’ll do everything in my power to protect her,” he said softly, almost gently. “You have my word.”

Her expression had crumpled just a bit, and Alfred’s heart went out for her.

But Julia was here now, surrounded by the Wayne cats and brightening at the sight of Selina coming in through the foyer.

“ _Mow_ ,” Bruce commented.

“Yes, Master Bruce, you were right,” Alfred said, stroking his back.

Bruce looked undeniably smug, and Alfred… god. He loved this cat. He loved all these cats, because they had been his family for so long. Were still his family, even after they patched his broken self back up enough to simply stand up.

To reach out.

And they loved him back.

“Papa, Selina says there’s this new movie out in town—can we go see? Please?” Julia interrupted his reverie, and Alfred stood up with a fond smile.

“Let me fetch my coat,” he said, and turned to find beautiful blue eyes twinkling at him from the dark. Proud and warm and knowing, like stars watching over the earth from the night sky.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fuzzy cats. Thanks for reading and happy new years to everyone. I CAN FINISH THINGS YES I CAN.


End file.
